Well, they finally went ahead and did it, despite the groom’s last-minute cold feet, despite the late night calls to old flames, despite the nervousness of both families: Donald Trump and Mike Pence have finally tied the knot. But as befits a marriage of convenience between Trump’s roughneck nationalism and Pence’s more traditional conservatism, the event celebrating the union was tense and rife with intimations of an unhappy future.
Trump kept talking about himself and only got to praising Pence after a lengthy discussion of his own achievements. Pence, supposedly the star of the hour, gave a much shorter speech that was full of generic Republican talking points. And after it was all over, the candidates couldn’t even hug each other, but shook hands uneasily. Like a wedding where everyone has doubts about the match, there were awkward photos as well, with Trump’s forced smile making him look like a grimacing puppet.
Will Trump/Pence be able to unite the Republicans to defeat Hillary Clinton? Based on this event, they need to do some serious marriage counseling first.