Republican National Circus -- Day 1

 Stephen Colbert brilliantly summarizes the first day of the Republican National Convention circus, with all its clowns, freaks, misfits, gargoyles and scary acts:




BONUS:  Sara Benincasa joins Stephen for a must- see preview of Melon Trump's speech tonight --




BONUS II:  On a serious note, here's some fact checking and discussion about the "parade of dishonesty" last night --




BONUS III:  A "Land of Promise" it was not --

President Trump and his political allies mounted a fierce and misleading defense of his political record on the first night of the Republican convention on Monday, while unleashing a barrage of attacks on Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party that were unrelenting in their bleakness.

Hours after Republican delegates formally nominated Mr. Trump for a second term, the president and his party made plain that they intended to engage in sweeping revisionism about Mr. Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, his record on race relations and much else. And they laid out a dystopian picture of what the United States would look like under a Biden administration, warning of a “vengeful mob” that would lay waste to suburban communities and turn quiet neighborhoods into war zones.

At times, the speakers and prerecorded videos appeared to be describing an alternate reality: one in which the nation was not nearing 180,000 deaths from the coronavirus; in which Mr. Trump had not consistently ignored serious warnings about the disease; in which the president had not spent much of his term appealing openly to xenophobia and racial animus; and in which someone other than Mr. Trump had presided over an economy that began crumbling in the spring.

It's the Trump Party, down to every last empty, soullesss shell.