When Donald Trump appeared at the back of the stage on Thursday, a deafening shout joined the thousands of throats that packed the Fiserv Forum floor, the Milwaukee basketball stadium that hosted this week’s Republican Convention, acclaiming Trump as the party’s undisputed leader.
On one side, the singer of country Lee Greenwood was playing again God Bless the USA, the anthem of Trumpism that he composed involuntarily 40 years ago, while the Republican candidate moved with a thoughtful step against the backdrop of a projection of the White House, an illuminated sign with his last name and, to one side, the volunteer firefighter’s gear of Corey Comperatore, the only fatal victim of last Saturday’s attack in which Trump was on the verge of losing his life at a rally in Pennsylvania. After a while, the former president approached and kissed the helmet, and announced that $6.3 million had been raised for the families of Comperatore and the other two injured, David Dutch and James Copenhaver.
After the initial euphoria of finally seeing their leader, five days after almost losing him, the delegates, who had spent the afternoon doing their own thing, intermittently listening to the speakers, talking to the press and dancing to southern rock, fell into a reverential silence, rising from their chairs. And then Trump, speaking more calmly than usual, began the story of how he experienced the assassination attempt.
His right ear was still bandaged. He warned: “I won’t tell it again, because it’s traumatic for me to remember.” When he said that on the day he narrowly escaped his life, “God was on his side,” an Illinois delegate burst into tears and a woman in the distance shouted: “We love you!” The crowd interrupted him with chants of “We want more Trump!” “US A! US A!” or “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – a tribute to what the candidate said with his fist raised after a bullet grazed his ear. “I shouldn’t be here tonight,” he said, to which his followers responded. “Yes, you should be!”
Once he had concluded his emotional personal reconstruction of what happened in Pennsylvania, the old Trump gradually returned, with his jokes about Abdul, an imaginary jihadist from Afghanistan, his lies, his half-truths and his exaggerations to praise the achievements of his Administration and attack what came next, which were interrupted by the cheers of the Republican delegates. In other words, the speech began to look a lot like one of his rallies, although it had begun with a novelty: the promise that if he wins in November (and he seemed convinced that he will) he will serve as “president of all of America and not just half of America.”
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The candidate’s calm tone contrasted with the adrenaline that possessed the rest of the speakers of the day and with the party atmosphere that was breathed among the delegates after four days in Milwaukee. Among them, the usual parade of extravaganzas was repeated, from the cheese-shaped hats of the delegates from Wyoming (the Dairy State) to an Elvis impersonator named David Brown, Republican of Iowa. Although the special mention went to those from Wyoming; they were in the worst corner, but they did not stop dancing.
The wrestler Hulk Hogan, an icon of the eighties that Trump seems to miss so much, deserved a separate chapter. Hogan did everything that was expected of him: he shouted loudly, he practiced his characteristic gesture of bringing his hand to his ear and, at one of the climactic points of the closing day of the Milwaukee convention, he tore off his shirt to reveal another one, from the Trump-Vance campaign, now that the ticket is already final, after the incorporation of JD Vance as a candidate for vice president.
The appearance of Hogan, a friend of Trump’s “for 35 years,” he said, was a truly surreal moment, unusual for a political event of this kind. If anyone needed an image to pinpoint the exact moment when this party stopped being the party of Mitt Romney, John McCain or George W. Bush, perhaps the moment when Hogan ripped his shirt would do.
In a display of testosterone, the fighter, followed by a preacher who melted the audience in prayer, had a serious rival in the old glory of nineties rap-metal, Kid Rock, who released a song with a chorus, another reference to Trump’s reaction after the attack, saying, fist raised: “Say fight, fight, fight. Say Trump, Trump, Trump.” Kid Rock, who had as a background the image of an American flag and virtual flames typical of a heavy metal concert, referred to the former president as the “most patriotic American macho.”
The guitars and shouting of the singer, who in recent years has become a star of the MAGA universe, contrasted with another musical selection, the one that accompanied the expected entrance on stage of Melania Trump, “the next first lady of the United States,” as the event’s announcer defined her. The convention had been waiting for four days for the moment of her appearance, for which she chose the adage of the Ninth Beethoven as she made her way to the box where her husband watched the speeches, without her, all week.
On Thursday, the space was filled by the (almost) entire Trump family. Looking towards the podium in admiration were Maryland delegates Christopher Anderson and Jerry DeWall, both wearing fake bandages on their right ears to show their “respect and admiration for Trump in a light-hearted way,” they said.
When Trump finished his speech, the entire clan came on stage and balloons fell on the delegates, it was clear that this convention will also be remembered for breaking records for inbreeding and inbreeding (or nepotism, depending on how you look at it). Two of Trump’s sons (Donald Jr. and Eric), a granddaughter (Kai) and two daughters-in-law (Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle) took the stage in Milwaukee.
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