MILWAUKEE: It was the first time Donald Trump was appearing in public, besides a fleeting shot climbing down an aircraft, since the assassination bid on him on Saturday. He first appeared on the big screen with his right ear bandaged, as thousands of Republican delegates present in Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum erupted in applause. Trump waited till he was introduced, smiled, and then walked on the floor.
And the chants began. We Want Trump; USA, USA. Supporters cheered him on, as Trump greeted them and headed towards a section of the hall where his new vice presidential pick, JD Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson and Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, Vance’s most ardent advocate in what is now the Republican first family, were waiting for him.
As Trump walked up, the optics couldn’t have been better. Trump placards were all over the hall. A huge banner proclaiming Make America Great Again (MAGA) was plastered on one side. The screen showed him to both the delegates present but too distant to catch him live, and to millions watching on television. Trump greeted Vance and Johnson who sat next to him; conservative media celebrity Tucker Carlson sat on the same row as Trump. Members of his family sat behind.
And the crowd, below him and above him, stood, turned to Trump, watched, clapped and took their phones to record history in the making. And then they chanted a new slogan that is poised to become a rallying cry for Republicans — Fight, Fight, Fight, the word Trump mouthed when he stood up after being shot, his fists pumped.
The official Republican nominee for the president of the United States of America, Donald J Trump, clearly had the entire Republican Party behind him.
A few hours earlier, on Monday, the Republican National Convention nominated Trump as their official nominee for president, after each state had pledged their nominees to Trump. Johnson, the permanent chair of the convention in his capacity as the speaker of the House, had officially declared Trump as the candidate.
An intense nine-year chapter that began when Trump came down the elevator of Trump Tower in New York to announce his candidacy in 2015 has now entered its next chapter. The 2016 surprise victory was accompanied by a radical disruption in how America is governed. Trump reset America’s trade, economic, foreign policies; reconfigured its Supreme Court that eventually led to the the end of national protection to abortion, a key conservative plank; and became the first president to be impeached twice.
Trump lost in 2020, but refused to accept the verdict and encouraged a mob to march to the US Capitol, where they attacked the Congress and attempted to block the certification of results. This inaugurated a new phase in Trump’s career where he was written off and faced a range of cases.
But in November 2022, the 45th President of the US decided he was going to run again to become the 47th President of the US. Since then, he built a far more disciplined campaign, swept aside his rivals — Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis — in the Republican primaries. Despite getting convicted in one of the four criminal cases he has been charged with, Trump’s political stock kept rising. Indeed, he built his campaign around the theme of victimhood, and at the convention, one of the most striking images outside the venue was of Trump merchandise. T-shirts with Trump’s image were plastered with slogans such as “I am voting for the convicted felon”; another T-shirt said “Never Surrender” with Trump’s mugshot.
And then, in the past four weeks, the political landscape altered. Trump’s rival, President Joe Biden, performed disastrously in the first debate, sparking an internal backlash within the Democratic Party calling for his exit. And on Saturday, Trump survived an assassination bid in Pennsylvania’s Butler County as a bullet grazed his ear.
Republican delegates at the convention were intimately familiar with each episode in Trump’s political life. And to them, each of these episodes made him an even bigger leader.
Explaining what drew her to Trump, Sheryl Foland, a Republican delegate from Wyoming who is a mental health therapist and substance abuse treatment specialist, told HT: “He is outside the mainstream. His policies helped me. It gave me tax breaks and made filings easier. Under him, gas prices were low and this was easier on my clients, many of whom have to drive a 100 miles to just come and see me.” She lauded his energy policies – Trump has declared he will “drill, baby, drill” — and claimed it gave her state revenues, dismissing environmental concerns.
Kip Christianson, a 33-year-old Republican delegate from Minnesota, said that his generation had been crushed by rising costs and Trump needed another chance to “finish his work”.
Matt, who preferred not to give his last name, a Republican from Alabama, liked Trump’s embrace of crypto and opposed regulations in the new sector. Two elderly Republican women from California, who did not want to be named, said they liked Trump because he did what he said he would, with one of them saying, with obvious admiration, “I look at him and feel like he is a man, he exudes power. I look at him and feel he is in charge.”
This cultish following has been reinforced after the shooting on Saturday, with speaker after speaker attributing Trump’s decision to turn his head at the last second before the shot to God’s blessing. A Christian prayer for Trump was followed by a Sikh prayer, with Harmeet Dhillon, a prominent Californian Republican, covering her head and offering the prayer. She called Trump nirbhaya, fearless, and thanked Waheguru for protecting the Republican nominee.
HT asked Reince Preibeius, a Wisconsin local, the Republican committee chairman in 2016 who helped catapult Trump to power, Trump’s first chief of staff who lasted only six months and now the chair of the host committee for the convention — what would be different this time if Trump got elected. He responded, about Trump 2.0, “More efficient, less clumsy, more precise.” And it is that sense of a victory in the making, and of a different and even more radical Trump administration, that scares his critics and opponents, but also explains the passionate support and enthusiasm of his admirers on the convention floor in Milwaukee.
