The fourth and final day of the Republican National Convention features yet another strange assortment of speakers. Here are the most peculiar and noteworthy of the bunch:
Thomas Barrack, billionaire financial investor. Barrack is a longtime Donald Trump associate and was an early Trump endorser, who as of last month had raised $32 million for a pro-Trump super PAC. He owns the Neverland Ranch.
Brock Mealer, motivational speaker. After a 2007 car wreck on Christmas Eve that killed his father and his brother’s girlfriend, Mealer suffered a spinal cord injury and was told he had a 99 percent chance of never walking again. Within two years of physical therapy, he was walking with a full leg brace and a walker. After training for a period with the University of Michigan football team, he was able to walk with two canes and led the team out onto the field before a game. Five years after his injury, he was able to walk down the aisle at his wedding without the canes. Of the time Trump seemed to mock a disabled New York Times reporter, Mealer said this: “I can just really see where things can be misinterpreted. Each candidate has their moments of fault for whatever reason.”
Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal. While a Silicon Valley avatar and a gay man—two constituencies not normally considered to be major parts of the Republican tent—would seem like a strange person to give a prime-time speech on the final night of the GOP convention, this makes some sense. First off, Thiel has written critically about democracy and the “the unthinking demos,” which gives a man of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies an obvious appeal. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” Thiel wrote in a 2009 essay about his libertarianism. “In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics.” Bloomberg News reported that, “Thiel will be the first speaker to publicly acknowledge his or her homosexuality at a Republican convention.” He once called Trump “sort of symptomatic of everything that is wrong with New York City.”
Donald Trump, businessman and politician. According to his Wikipedia entry, Trump “is an American businessman, television personality, author, politician, and the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election.” His official Republican convention bio notes that he has worked for many years in real estate, hosted “NBC’s Emmy-nominated reality show, The Apprentice,” and “authored more than 15 books, including the well-known business classic, The Art of the Deal.” He has never held elected office before and has a propensity for making outlandish statements, which made his nomination a bit of a surprise. Trump has appeared in a number of TV shows and films over the years, including The Jeffersons, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, The Nanny, Spin City, and Sex and the City. Trump’s hobbies have included golf, wrestling, and his beloved Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants, which he owned at least in part between 1996 and 2015. He is an inductee in the WWE Hall of Fame (class of 2013). His net worth is unknown.
