Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president, and he gave a speech. Prior to giving the speech, there was talk that he would be a somber and chastened Trump, someone who has just experienced a life-or-death moment and has come from it with a newfound appreciation for unity. He now understands the gravity of the office he is campaigning for once again. And at the beginning of the speech, there was a little bit of this, right? He said the words, “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America.” You have to balance statements like this against the fact that his campaign also distributed signs saying, “Mass deportation now,” which is not something you do if you’re all that interested in unity. But nonetheless, Trump said he wanted unity. But after this pro forma talk of unity, after going through a description of the attempt on his life, Trump returned to the guy we recognize on the political stage since 2015, someone whose vision is dark and disturbing, who attacks his opponents as existential threats to the nation. He warned that “our planet is teetering on the edge of World War III.” He spoke of a migrant invasion. “There’s never been an invasion like this anywhere. Third world countries would fight with sticks and stones not to let this happen.” He referred to Nancy Pelosi as “crazy Nancy Pelosi.” He said that Democrats were going to try to cheat and steal the election. “If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch hunts, which I have been going through for approximately eight years. And they should do that without delay and allow an election to proceed that is worthy of our people. We’re going to win it anyway.” He engaged in a riff that we saw him engage in during the debate, where he warned that illegal immigrants were “taking the jobs from our Black population.” All the things we’ve seen before — playing the greatest hits, you might say. But one thing that was unusual about this performance onstage: that even as he was playing these hits, even as he was engaged in genuinely divisive rhetoric, he was very sedate, not somber. Not somber. Somber is an attitude. Sedate is an affect. And he was sedate. He was unable to summon the kind of energy we’ve seen before. You could even say that he was a bit low energy, to borrow a Trumpism. There was none of the excitement we’ve often seen, when he was engaged in this kind of riffing. And this was riffing. Although there was a speech on the teleprompter, Trump ignored it for long stretches, going on these tangents that were genuinely hard to follow and often quite incoherent. “By the way, you know, who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.” If you were going to judge this like a theater critic, you might say that this acceptance speech was one of the worst ever given by president accepting a nomination. It was striking. On his podcast, my colleague Ezra Klein spoke to the reporter Tim Alberta about the Trump 2024 campaign. And one of the things that struck me in the interview is that Alberta mentions “the key contrast in this campaign that the Trump people have been trying to engineer and optimize and operationalize from Day 1 is strength versus weakness.” But on that nomination stage, Trump did not look strong. He looked halting, hesitant and down tempo. He should have looked the worst of all worlds, both very divisive, as usual, but not even divisive in an exciting way, divisive in a way that strongly signaled that he may also not have the energy to be president for another four years. Now, given who his opponent is, this might not be an issue, but we’re at this stage where it’s not actually clear that the incumbent president is going to be his direct competitor in the election in the fall. And if he does have to go up against someone younger, more vital, that “Trump strong” message may not land the way the campaign wants it to.