WASHINGTON Over four days, Republicans have painted a portrait of a mythic Donald Trump : one who admires and respects women, who embraces the Black community, who has been deeply engaged in battling the coronavirus pandemic.

Which leaves it now to the president to play that role over the 67 remaining days to the election.

His critics across the political spectrum are optimistically skeptical.

He will undermine it all with his next utterance, said Charles Leerhsen, Trumps ghostwriter for his 1990 book Surviving at the Top. In recent years, Leerhsen has said he found Trumps intellect and business acumen sorely lacking.

The only role he can pretend to play is the tough law-and-order guy who will protect white people from all the brown and Black people, said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who ran against Trump for the 2020 presidential nomination.

And Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris , in a speech Thursday, said Trump was incapable of change. The president he has been is the president he will be, the senator from California said.

This week, largely in pre-taped speeches from the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., participants in the Republican National Convention have tried to explain to Americans that most dont really know the real Donald Trump.

Republican women who work for him, like presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway , or who are related to him, like wife Melania Trump , portrayed him as caring deeply about women even though dozens of other women have accused him of sexual misconduct up to and including rape .

African American speakers testified to his great concern for the Black community despite his decades-long history of racism , including the Justice Department action against him in the 1970s for housing discrimination and his leadership in the birther movement designed to delegitimize the countrys first Black president.

Others portrayed an engaged president leading a forceful and successful response to the pandemic when, in reality, Trump downplayed the threat for seven weeks and then lost interest in dealing with it in a rush to get back to his campaign rallies. As a consequence, U.S. deaths per capita are five times what they are in Germany, and more than 180,000 Americans have died.

Other speakers seemed to push the idea that Trump is a different, more relatable, nicer person than his public statements and actions make him appear.

I learned that hes a good man, that he loves his family, that he didnt need this job, that no one on Earth works harder for the American people, daughter-in-law Lara Trump said.

Ive seen him when the cameras are off, said Vice President Mike Pence in his re-nomination acceptance speech Wednesday night at Fort McHenry in Baltimore.