Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Below are Donald Trump's remarks accepting the Republican nomination as delivered. Where text is in bolded, it denotes a place where Trump's comment deviated from the original draft that leaked to the press.

Friends, delegates and fellow Americans: I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States....

Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention was only 8% specific policy promises. On the other hand, by my word-for-word calculation, 20% of it was criticism of Trump’s opponents, 21% was fearmongering, and the rest was mostly vague generalities and cheerleading.

Based on this speech, you really can’t identify what you’ll be getting if this guy gets elected — but you certainly know what to be afraid of it he doesn’t.

Let me break it down for you.

I used the Washington Post’s version of the planned text of the speech.  Then I marked it up in different colors to represent different elements: vague promises, passive promises that something will magically happen, overarching proclamations, criticism of opponents and elites — and the few actual promises.

You can see my analysis in the color-coded graphic at the end of this post, and you can see the color-coded text in my Google Document of the speech....