Trump Emerges from Convention a Republican Caesar

The ex-president faces few guardrails and even less dissent as he moves closer to reclaiming the White House.

(Composite / Photos: Leon Neal, Prisma/UIG/Getty Images)

THIS WEEK’S GOP CONVENTION formally marked Donald Trump as a three-time nominee for president—only the second Republican, after Richard Nixon, to be thrice given his party’s nod.

It also presented him as a Republican Caesar, a figure of immense power and cultural sway with few if any guardrails to hold back his ambitions.

Over the course of four days, Trump saw the passage of a party platform expertly tailored for his specific political whims and interests. He then watched the convention’s festivities in emperor-like fashion, perched in a lower deck of the convention hall arena with family and friends.

Former opponents lined up to praise him. Handpicked entertainers performed for him. Social-media influencers and business leaders exalted him as preachers testified to his strength and divine protection.

By Thursday evening, the large bandage Trump wore over the ear grazed by an assassin’s bullet had become a heraldic device for conventiongoers, many of whom wore copycat bandages on their own ears in solidarity.

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said.

“Yes you are,” they chanted back.

It was a sharp departure from the two previous conventions that nominated Trump. In 2016, a small group of Trump-critical Republicans mounted a last-ditch effort on the floor of the convention hall in Cleveland to prevent his nomination; it was quickly quashed. In 2020, the pandemic forced Trump to hold a virtual online convention, robbing him of the adoring crowds he craves, until his norm- and law-defying acceptance speech on the White House lawn.

Thursday was the climax of the adoration convention Trump always wanted—and an illustration of how fully he has remade the party he now leads.

Gone was any vestige of dissent or ideological disagreement. The social conservatives in the party stayed muted as Trump jettisoned many of their cultural issues. The national security hawks stayed quiet as he picked a vice president who shares his skepticism about the Ukraine war. The old establishment didn’t bother to even show up.

In its place was a blend of entertainment, religiosity, and politics unlike anything in modern convention history. Retired pro-wrestler Hulk Hogan amped up the crowd of “Trumpamaniacs,” called Trump a “gladiator,” and tore off his own tank top—his signature move from his days in the ring. He was followed, in one of the more disjointing pairings, by preacher Franklin Graham. Then came rapper Kid Rock, who repurposed his track “American Bad Ass” in fist-pumping homage to Trump. And mixed martial arts promoter Dana White introduced Trump, hailing his toughness.

Those were the warmup acts.

Trump was the main draw. His acceptance speech was two addresses in one. It started in a subdued and personal fashion with calls for unity and a recounting of his near-assassination at a Butler County, Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.

His delivery stayed subdued as his remarks morphed into more of a typical campaign speech, one that saw him call one opponent “crazy,” repeat lies about the 2020 election, and declare the nation’s capital city a “horrible killing field.”

He repeatedly ignored his teleprompter and let his thoughts flow, delivering an at times disjointed address that dwelled mostly on immigration. He pledged to bring back manufacturing, remove disincentives for gas-powered cars, and lower inflation. The crowd’s energy began to wane as the speech stretched on past what seemed like several natural stopping points—ultimately going on for some ninety minutes.

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BUT BY THE END, they cheered as if they wanted more. Many had even come to see Trump in spiritual terms.

“A lot of my friends who aren’t particularly religious people believe this was God’s will,” said Aurora Stuski, a Pennsylvania delegate, of the former president surviving the assassination attempt. “And when he got up and put his fist in the air and said ‘Fight!’ It became a unifying factor for all of us.”

Illinois delegate Kenneth Jochum donned a fake ear bandage with an American flag printed on it that said “Trump 2024.”

“He is going to bring our country back as one nation under God,” Jochum said.

The religious sentiment in the convention hall was so strong that, earlier in the evening when conservative commentator Tucker Carlson spoke, someone shouted from the floor that Trump was protected by God.

“I think it was divine intervention,” Carlson said. “But the effect it had on Donald Trump—he was no longer just a political party’s nominee, or a former president, or a future president. This was the leader of a nation.”

The backdrop of the convention wasn’t just Trump’s remarkable survival from the assassination attempt. It was also a string of luck that has left him on the cusp of returning to the White House with few legal or political restraints to encumber him. President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance June 27 was followed by a Supreme Court decision that will delay Trump’s January 6th criminal trial until after the election. The ruling also led to a delay in Trump’s sentencing in the criminal hush-money case. And on Monday, the day the Republican convention opened, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified documents case against Trump—an act that earned her praise in his speech Thursday.

Trump’s political operation, too, has shown a maturity that has impressed fellow conservatives, including Carlson, who complimented it from the convention floor. The chaos that characterized the 2016 and 2020 campaigns—emanating primarily from Trump but also from his team—has been largely absent.

Collectively, the last three weeks have left Trump in an enviable position: polling better than his opponent, revered in his party, more seasoned politically, with none of the Republican factionalism that hurt him before, and with judicial proceedings seeming to sputter out. Sarah Brady, a delegate from Idaho, said she could feel the unity in the party like never before. And she said the assassination attempt was emblematic of how Republicans feel.

“To me, Trump’s comeback is America’s comeback,” she said. “He got knocked down and he got back up.”

In Milwaukee, Trump did more than that. He came. He saw. He conquered.