‘Everything Is Going Right’—Trumpists Can’t Believe Their Own Convention
Republican partygoers feel like they’re going to win (although some are too superstitious to admit it).
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
AT THE BACK END OF THE GROUND FLOOR of the Fiserv Forum, Lynn Bradescu proudly held an off-white sign with bold lettering: “We Are Jews For Trump.”
Amid a crowd of thousands of Republican conventiongoers, it stood out—not simply because of the bluntness of the proclamation but because of where Bradescu sat: among the Idaho delegation.
“There are Jews in Idaho?” I asked.
“You’re looking at her.”
As Bradescu explained to me how “Trump loves Jews” and, therefore, there should be some reciprocity, a fellow conventiongoer piped in: “Lynn, we’re not supposed to be doing interviews!” Bradescu shrugged her shoulders and shot me a mischievous smile.
The attendees inside the GOP convention hall are, like Bradescu, living carefree. The presidential candidate they support has a steady and growing lead. The opposition they’re fighting is splintered. They feel confident that, in four months’ time, they will be victorious.
Outside the arena, the mood was even more nonchalant, resembling a summer barbeque. Attendees walked around the plaza smoking butts and drinking beers. A robust cornhole setup entertained the slightly inebriated. A group of blue-striped polo-wearing attendees of frat-boy vintage grabbed mixed drinks from the Fat Tuesday kiosk as they commented on the “fantastic” vibe. Confidence dripped from the brims of their red MAGA caps down to the soles of their Sperrys.
To a person, none of the attendees I interviewed could recall ever feeling this bullish at such a gathering before. Barbara Finger (who stressed repeatedly that her name was spelled differently than Streisand’s) put her confidence level at an eight out of ten. The last two points she withheld on grounds of superstition. “When I’ve gotten cocky or confident,” she explained, “it doesn’t happen.”
You couldn’t have predicted this jubilance a few years ago. On January 7, 2021, Trump was an exile of sorts. Then, after the 2022 elections, he was chastised for his role in setting up the GOP’s midterm failure. The conservative movement’s main media pipeline, Fox News, was turning on him. MAGA’s ascendant tech-tycoon class salivated over Ron DeSantis. The party’s national security wing pined for Nikki Haley.
But then Trump was indicted and Republicans, including his opponents, rallied around him. And then he won the primary without participating in a single debate. And then he was convicted and his party only amped up its support for him. And then he was nearly killed and became something still greater to them.
“I believe there is a distinct possibility that God had his hand on that,” said Craig Licciardi while discussing the wannabe assassin’s shot at the former president on Saturday. Licciardi sat among the Texas delegation and held a MAGA placard that he’d amended with inscriptions calling for a 3rd Great Awakening and to Make America not just great, but Godly Again. “Our country needs a return to Jesus Christ and it needs a return to the biblical values it was founded upon,” he explained. “I believe Trump will make the conditions conducive to that occurring.”
Whether feeling as though they were attending a coronation or a nomination, on Tuesday, the very people who once opposed Trump stood beside him. Rupert Murdoch, whose media properties had once looked so longingly for an alternative, showed up to watch the festivities. DeSantis, whose tech supporters had endorsed Trump in the weeks and days before, joined them in boosting his erstwhile foe. So, too, did Haley, who used her address not to suggest that delegates “vote their conscience” (as Trump’s main primary opponent in 2016, Ted Cruz, had done at the Republican convention that year), but to call on those in the crowd to “join together as a party.”
Off in the Illinois delegation, a woman booed the former UN ambassador, only to be hushed by a fellow attendee: “She’s on our team now!”
AND WHAT A TEAM IT IS—a mix of the party’s most controversial personalities and its senior officeholders, all held together with cult-like bindings.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sat for part of the evening in the VIP section behind Trump, while Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist who once handcuffed herself to Twitter’s NYC offices to protest getting banned, walked throughout the crowd. Some attendees wore fake ear bandages to mimic Trump’s own. Up on the dais House Speaker Mike Johnson called Republicans the “law-and-order team” while down on the floor conventiongoers held up signs celebrating the pending nomination of a convicted felon.
“I think it’s a combination of things,” former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said of how the GOP’s various factions have all come together. “I think the overstepping by liberals and prosecutors . . . caused a lot of Republicans to say, ‘Maybe we had differences in the primary season, but this can happen to anybody.’ And then you combine that with what just happened this week, and Americans, not just Republicans here, are very passionate that we want to be united.”
But it wouldn’t be right to label this a convention of unity. For one, the unity being preached by Trump and others pertains solely to Republicans; there’s no talk of bridging divides with Democrats. Moreover, for all the former Trump foes who have turned up in Milwaukee, there are also the Republicans who chose not to come. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, tweeted that he was in Montana. The last Republican president before Trump, George W. Bush, may as well have not existed. The last GOP presidential nominee before Trump, Senator Mitt Romney, now qualifies as a villain. And the majority of Trump’s former cabinet has stayed away.
In any other cycle, those absences would be the main storyline—not just a blemish on the convention, but a major warning sign about the election ahead. But this cycle is different. This cycle, the mood feels, for now, just right.
“It was the best first day ever,” said Ron Kaufman, a GOP operative who has attended every convention since Barry Goldwater’s in 1964. “It’s even better comparing it to what the Democrats have right now.”
Kaufman insisted that he wasn’t counting the election over just yet. But he couldn’t quite mask the strength of his confidence.
“It’s crazy,” he said from the convention floor. “Everything is going right.”