In the court of Donald Trump: A journey into the bowels of the Republican National Convention

When a bullet whistled dangerously close to Donald Trump’s head last Saturday, Vince Fusca was there in the crowd, following the former president’s speech from the stands behind him. This past Monday, the day that Trump made a triumphant reappearance at the Republican National Convention with his left ear bandaged, Fusca was there again, wearing his unmistakable short-brimmed fedora and browsing the stands at the event, which runs through Thursday in Milwaukee.

“Seeing him from behind as he fell to the ground the way he did, I said to myself: ‘That’s it, they killed him,’ he told EL PAÍS while a couple of supporters of the Republican candidate waited to get their picture taken with him. They had also recognized him after watching footage of the assassination attempt, in images that have gone around the world around a billion times at this point.

Fusca could not answer the question of how he and those around him were able to remain calm in those moments, although he said that he was “willing to take action to neutralize the shooter,” a 20-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks whose motive is still a mystery to investigators. His plans, he added, were to travel directly to Milwaukee from the place where the rally was being held, a farm in Butler, Pennsylvania, near his own place of residence. But after the attack he changed his mind: it was better to spend Sunday at home, to “assimilate the trauma,” and drive to the convention the next day. “I couldn’t miss this in any way; I am a convinced Trump supporter from the beginning,” said Fusca, who gained some notoriety in 2022 as a failed Senate candidate for Pennsylvania.

The assassination attempt, which has turned the U.S. presidential campaign upside down with less than four months to go to election day, has not only extended Fusca’s 15 minutes of fame in the MAGAverse, it has also added interest to a convention that seemed predictable to the point of being almost boring. It has also served to ensure complete and devoted support for their leader: all of the nearly 2,500 delegates voted to nominate Trump on Monday, despite the fact that other candidates such as Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis and, above all, Nikki Haley, had managed to snag a few votes in the primaries. The definitive proof that Trump enjoys absolute control of the party came with the last-minute inclusion of Haley, his last rival, as one of the speakers on Tuesday’s program.

But it’s the delegates who are at the center of this event. They came here from all 50 states and U.S. territories dressed in their best clothes. The 161 members of the Texas delegation, for example, all wear cowboy hats. On everyone else’s heads, the red Make America Great Again caps are predominant. There is an infinite supply of Trump merchandise on hand. There are also countless references to Lincoln, the founding myth of the party; hats with elephants; women’s dresses with the American flag; costumes from the days of the War of Independence, badges reminiscent of candidates from past elections and a lot of blue suits, white shirts and red ties.

The delegations are organized in specific areas inside the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee, home to the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, which has been covered with carpeting for the occasion. As with the Eurovision song competition, things here have their own set of rules that come close to geopolitics. For example, if the candidate is from Florida, then that state’s delegates get a prominent place close to the stage, just like the representatives of the states that will be decisive in the election. But wherever they happen to be placed, everyone proudly champions their own state or territory: as everyone knows, there is no place in the world that surpasses the great State of South Dakota in beauty, nor is there a place with a richer and more heroic history than the commonwealth of Virginia.

Ohio Pride

On Monday, Ohio residents enjoyed unexpected pride when it emerged that Trump had chosen one of their own, Senator J.D. Vance, as his VP companion on the ballot. Shortly after the announcement, Linda Caudill, a resident of Cincinatti – “just like Vance,” she said proudly – predicted that the two would make “a great tandem.” “I know him well; he is one of us. And both will understand each other perfectly, there will be no friction,” she added, while the volunteers distributed posters with the brand new slogan “Trump 2024.” Meanwhile, a meme was already starting to gain traction on mobile phones: the old 2020 ballot that said Trump-Pence had been modified by crossing out the the “p” and the “e” in Pence, to make it say “Trump-Vance.”

Among the delegates, there are many men and women who, like Caudill, are over 60 years old. There are people with a long history of involvement in politics, like Bill Huff, from Vermont, who was a candidate for party president in his county and had signed up “for the experience,” and others who made an effort in the primaries “to listen to other proposals” before deciding on the former president,” like Bob (“no last names, please”), from Texas. Almost everyone could relate to the words of South Carolina’s Ann Beauchamp: “My support? It’s 110% for Trump.” And most of the dozen or so people interviewed for this story believed that the fact that Trump did not die in the assassination attempt was due to “some type of divine intervention.”

Perhaps the delegates who have the greatest merit are the nine who came all the way from Guam. “A whole day by plane” separates the island of Micronesia from the big event in Milwaukee, as explained by its leader, Félix Camacho, who was governor of the U.S. territory for eight years. It is his fourth convention, and that fact alone speaks volumes about his Republican commitment. So much effort for (almost) nothing: the law does not allow residents of Guam to vote in the presidential election.

The ID tags that hang from the necks of the 50,000 attendees serve to identify each one. There are the journalists, also known as “the enemy of the people” in Trumpist jargon. They crowd around the tables in the last rows of the stands, except for those from the big media outlets, who have their own television set in front of the stage. Different party personalities pass through these spaces, from Kevin McCarthy, the very short-lived House speaker, to Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, who on Monday said that he felt very confident about a Trump victory in November. “I have never seen the party so united,” he said.

Then there are the 5,000 volunteers and the alternative delegates, who come to the convention in case someone fails to show up. On Monday they were nervously waiting for a call, like soccer players on the sidelines who don’t know for sure whether or not they will take the field. One of them, Kevin Gormand, was something like the needle in the haystack of Trumpism in Milwaukee, “the only one sent by Arkansas representing those who voted for Haley.”

The area that the city reserved for the event —Milwaukee is a largely Democratic city that is dealing with resignation with the triumphant RNC — includes dozens of streets blocked off to traffic, through which attendees wander with a lost look, following the instructions of members of the secret service and police officers who are armed to the teeth. There are dozens of side events, promoted by organizations like Serbs for Trump, screenings of the new film about Ronald Reagan, starring John Voight and Dennis Quaid, and book signings by the most vocal woman in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Around the stadium there is also everything one might need to stay entertained in between talks: stands and more stands selling merchandise, life-size silhouettes of Richard Nixon, a pub courtesy of CNN and Politico, and even a place where you can ditch your phone company and sign up for Patriot Mobile, “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider” and one that promises not to invest in woke causes. In the court of Donald Trump, that is clearly one of the worst possible forms of betrayal.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition