Another Trump adviser was hopeful that this supremely image-conscious man would catch the bug: “For the first time, he saw something that he had never seen: People from the entire spectrum saying, ‘That’s amazing.’ That’s an experience he’s never had before.”

Several insiders credited the speech’s tone to the involvement of a wider range of aides. “The Stephens” (Bannon and Miller) remained top wordsmiths, joined this time by a bigger circle that included Vice President Pence, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell and Hope Hicks.

Miller’s first draft followed Trump’s instruction to be uplifting. Later iterations got darker, then the final version came back to the light. “We got to the point where the grownups in the room no longer paid attention to command and control, and got involved for the sake of the country and the president,” one aide said.