By Gina Loudon

No serious observer could look at the Republican and Democrat conventions from a purely aesthetic angle and find them even roughly comparable.

The Democrats put on what many described as four nights of a nationally televised Zoom call. People fastidiously masked up — even outside or in their own homes — and delivered bland, straight-into-the-webcam sound bites. Speakers missed their cues. The cuts back to the audience-free, celebrity-hosted mission control center were rough. The jokes and applause lines lingered in the air, met only with silence. It was apparent to anyone watching that the Democrats were totally unprepared for their “virtual” convention.

The Republicans, conversely, broadcast the finest show imaginable given the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. Lavishly produced video segment and addresses from some of the capital’s most beautiful spaces — beautifully shot with multi-camera setups — were interspersed with live feeds from the White House and the socially distanced convention floor in Charlotte, North Carolina, where — unlike Joe Biden — President Trump insisted on appearing. Masks were worn when necessary, but there was none of the DNC’s ostentatious, demonstrative mask wearing, much less shots of people carrying masks around in their hands like Joe Biden did, apparently while at home with his own wife.

The disparity between the two conventions was clearest in the finales, the acceptance speeches by the parties’ nominees. Joe Biden gave his speech — barely 25 minutes and hardly updated from the generic stump speech he’s given for decades — alone in a silent Delaware arena. President Trump gave his 70-minute tour de force on the South Lawn of the White House before a crowd of staffers, family, guests, and donors.

The left knows exactly how badly the Democrats got blown out. You can tell by their furious attempts to recast the RNC’s triumphant optics as a dangerous violation of COVID social distancing protocols. The breathless hand wringing by cable news commentators over speakers standing too close together or too many people being on the South Lawn was immediately exposed as the disingenuous ploy it was when the same networks didn’t raise a peep about the thousands of maskless “protesters” packed together like sardines literally a couple hundred yards away.

In fact, they informed us that while the president was putting us all in danger of death by having a few hundred carefully screened supporters at his speech, it was perfectly fine for a considerably larger number of protesters to gather on the other side of the gate because — not a joke — “this is a public health crisis they are marching against. Systemic racism has taken so many lives.”

The next day they employed the same “reasoning” to avoid criticizing Al Sharpton’s massive rally.

By now, we know the people who showed up outside Trump’s acceptance speech well. They screamed about burning down the White House if they don’t get what they want. They threatened police officers, then noticed that police are “hard targets,” and instead savagely assaulted attendees of the president’s speech and even just elderly citizens they thought looked like the white oppressor of their fantasies.

Not a word from the left-wing media, even as the mob attacked a sitting U.S. Senator, Rand Paul, and his wife as they left the RNC finale.

That’s the real optics battle of this convention season. Violent, screaming thugs for Biden. Orderly, well-appointed public addresses for Trump. The Democrats spent their convention trying to ignore their supporters’ months of violent antics.

The media tried to ignore even more violent antics during the Republicans’ convention. The American people know what they saw, however. One side will never cower to rioters. The other will retreat to a televised Zoom call to cheer the rioters on.

Dr. Gina Loudon, Ph.D. (@RealDrGina) is a bestselling author, columnist, and frequent news commentator. She is the National Co-Chairwoman of Women for Trump and is on the Donald J. Trump for President Media Advisory Board and a senior anchor at America’s Voice News.