Donald Trump makes the most important speech of his career tonight at the Republican Convention tonight in Cincinnati.
He has an extremely easy act to follow in the shape of his wife Melania Trump, whose own speech was lifted from the current First Lady Michelle Obama.
The Trump campaign offered up a scapegoat in the shape of mysterious speech writer Meredith McIver, a in-house staffer who was initially believed to be fictional.
Meredith has been forgiven with the incident and will not be fired. She may even have a hand with the Don's speech tonight. If she is seeking inspiration, may we point her in the direction of a few of the finest orations from the world of sport.
Joe Connolly
Trump's longstanding hostility towards languages other than English, notwithstanding, we feel there is much the Republican nominee can learn from Joe Connolly's oration in 1980.
Connolly famously remembered the emigrants in his speech. Trump is also concerned with migration, albeit of the inward variety.
While Connolly and Trump may not be on the same page when it comes to an appreciation of the difficulty of the emigrant experience, we feel that Trump can surely adopt some of Connolly's lyrical Gaelgoir phraseology in his Cincinnati address.
Trump Variation:
Ach freisin caithfimid cuimhneamh ar dhaoine i Sasana, i Meiriceá, ar fuaid na tíre... Ní mór dúinn a sheoladh na eachtrannaigh mídhleathach sa bhaile.
[Translation: But we must also remember the people in England , in America , throughout the country... We must send these illegal aliens home.]
People of the Republican Party, we love you!
Roy Keane
Trump is renowned for being thin-skinned almost to the point of mental illness. Journalists who typed unflattering words about the man more than two decades ago still regularly find their inbox clogged up with abusive messages from the Don.
How will such a man be able to handle a Presidential campaign?
What if one of his aides presents a newspaper article claiming that Trump is feigning interest in many of the policies he now espouses? We fully expect Drumpf to go postal.
We could see a Keanean rant the likes of which hasn't been delivered since the Irish football team's brief pit-stop in the South Pacific in 2002.
Trump Variation:
I don't rate you as a party, I don't rate you as a political movement, and I don't rate you Mid-West hicks as a class of people. The only reason I have anything to do with you is because I thought this Presidential racket might prompt a cut in the corporate tax rate. You can stick your Presidential nomination up your bollocks.
Or directed at Hillary, should he accept the nomination but blow up later on:
I didn't rate you as a First Lady, I didn't rate you as a Governor of New York, And I don't rate you as a federal politician. The only reason I have anything to do with you is because the network said this debate would get serious ratings. You can stick your reasoned and civilised campaign up your non-existent bollocks.
Anthony Daly
The most celebrated All-Ireland winning speech delivered in English, the charismatic Daly hit the spot on that historic day back in 1995.
Trump would probably have enormous difficulty with a sentiment as modest as 'there were many Clare teams that were better than this Clare team but they were never as fortunate'.
But if he's looking to borrow a speech, he could do worse. We suspect he'd like Daly's harking back to that conversation with Waterford's Kieran Delahunty from the 1992 Munster championship.
Trump Variation:
They told us to stick to our steaks and golf courses. Well, at Trump International, we love our steaks and golf courses but we love our socially divisive Presidential campaigns as well.
Paídí O'Sé
No more than Paídí O'Sé, Donald Drumpf doesn't want to see any of his side messed about.
In his speech to the Republican Convention this evening, he would do well to remember the fist-pumpingly inspirational words of Paídí O'Sé, words far more deserving of the poignant Paul Kelly soundtrack than were the Oliver Stone scripted words delivered by Alfredo Pacino.
Trump Variation:
These fellas will cross the border if they're allowed... These fellas will get such a shell-shock this November that we'll put them back in Mexico for ten years or more.
The wit & wisdom of Graham Taylor
Graham Taylor is not renowned for his elegant speech patterns, but then Trump isn't known for the coherence of his speeches either.
As David Brooks of the New York Times wrote the other day, Trump doesn't tend to speak in sentences or paragraphs himself.
He doesn’t really speak in sentences or paragraphs. His speeches are punctuated by five- or six-word jabs that are sort of strung together by connections that can only be understood through chaos theory: “They want the wall … I dominated with the evangelicals … I won in a landslide … We can’t be the stupid people anymore.”
The pair share an odd approach to the English language. But Taylor's spluttering touchline inarticulacy succeeded in conveying a deeper truth to those who watched later on. Here was a man on the edge of frustration. Trump too is mad and is struggling to take it anymore.
Trump variation:
Can we not build it? (aka, the wall)
