Cult of the leader in Milwaukee: The Republican Party is now Donald Trump’s party

On February 13, 2021, the history of the United States was on the verge of changing. Like one of those Marvel What If? comics, which ventured alternate timelines for their superheroes, it is tempting to imagine what America would be today if only 10 more Republican senators had voted guilty at the second impeachment trial against Donald Trump. Many had openly criticized the outgoing president for his role in the assault on the Capitol the previous January 6, but they did not dare to sign what would have amounted to a political death sentence.

It is also tempting to think what things would be like for the Republican Party today if three and a half years ago they had turned the page on Trump. The GOP is currently gathered in Milwaukee at its national convention, where it has a double objective: to finalize the ticket for the November elections, with J.D. Vance installed as the vice-presidential candidate, and to worship its leader, who has been turned into a martyr and a mythical figure — almost immortal — after surviving an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday.

Acclaimed as a White House hopeful unanimously on Monday by the nearly 2,500 delegates present in Milwaukee, Trump will deliver his big speech on Thursday night, of which little is known beyond the suspicion that he will try to present an image of moderation. After all, it is no longer a question of convincing his own, but the rest of those who might vote for him. That intervention will be the highlight of a triumphant four-day meeting being staged without the dissent with which — as a newcomer — he was greeted at the 2016 convention, nor the anxiety of the Covid pandemic that overshadowed the 2020 event.

On this occasion, everything has been designed to pay obeisance to the great leader in the Fiserv Forum basketball stadium where the convention is being held. There are (over) life-size photos of Trump everywhere, and the stores and street stalls are overflowing with merchandising that glorifies the Republican nominee, even in his status as a convicted felon. There’s the Trump Lobby and Room 47, which refers to the number he will assume in the historical pantheon as president of the United States if he wins the election in November.

The delegates have nothing but good things to say about him, and praise flows unabated on the speakers’ rostrum. None of the party’s past guardians, such as former president George W. Bush, are expected on the podium, as would be anticipated at such an event. Dissenting voices are only admitted if — like that of Nikki Haley, his most serious opponent in the primaries — they deliver a speech of contrition for having confronted Trump in the past.

It is enough look at the box in which the candidate sits — with a bandage on his ear that, hard as it is to believe, has become an accessory for some attendees — to see to what extent Trump has molded the party to his whim. Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and some of the most extreme congresspeople on Capitol Hill, such as Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, both at the culmination of their journey from the fringes to the center of power, have been seen there, as has Mike Johnson, the ultra-Catholic Speaker of the House. Johnson is the country’s third-highest authority and on Tuesday he painted a future for the United States that dangerously resembles that of a theocracy.

Kevin McCarthy — a Republican of the old guard who preceded Johnson as speaker until he was ousted in a rebellion led by Gaetz — expressed his amazement on Tuesday in a meeting with foreign journalists at the path carved out by Trump since the assault on the Capitol (after which McCarthy also criticized him unreservedly), as well as the strength with which he arrived in Milwaukee, less than four months before the country goes to the ballot; almost all polls have Trump winning the November election against the worst possible version of Joe Biden, whose physical and mental abilities have been called into question since his disastrous performance in the debate between the two candidates in Atlanta. “I’m even surprised at how much his disposition has changed since the assassination attempt; [the former president] is a different person,” McCarthy said.

The attack, whose investigation still presents many loose ends, is the penultimate chapter in the amazing story of the fall and rise of Trump, which begins with its protagonist at his lowest ebb: on January 20, 2021, the day of Biden’s inauguration, almost on the sly, flying over the skies of Washington aboard the presidential helicopter to a golden exile: Mar-a-Lago, (Florida).

The Palm Beach mansion has witnessed some of Trump’s worst moments. Among them, the FBI search for confidential papers that he took without permission from the White House, which are at the origin of one of the four lawsuits that last Monday, just in time for the Milwaukee convention, the Trump-appointed judge overseeing the case dismissed. All those who at some point turned their backs on “kissing the ring,” an expression used by Haley when she said she would not follow suit, have also passed through Palm Beach.

Trump launched his candidacy for the White House in November 2022 from Mar-a-Lago. He made the announcement early to draw attention from the poor Republican results in the midterm elections. At the time, seemingly isolated and reduced to his angriest and most resentful image, the tycoon seemed doomed to irrelevance. A new face, that of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (who on Tuesday also swallowed the pill of speaking at his rival’s convention) seemed poised to dislodge him. But that was just a mirage.

The announcement in March 2023 that a grand jury in New York was going to try Trump for making a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged sexual relationship between the two marked the first of the former president’s pending criminal accounts: then came the indictments in Florida, for the Mar-a-Lago papers; Washington, for his attempts to reverse the legitimate results of the 2020 elections; and Atlanta, for his attempts at vote rigging in the state of Georgia.

Out of the latter investigation came his mugshot, the first of a sitting or former president in U.S. history. He quickly became an icon. At the New York trial, he was convicted of 34 felonies. His sentence should have been announced last Friday, but a lifeline thrown by the Supreme Court (three of whose nine members Trump appointed), delayed it. Six justices voted in favor of extending immunity for his actions as president, which also removed the possibility of the rest of the trials being held before the election, in which Americans will vote without knowing whether one of the candidates will be sentenced to a prison term.

“The dismissal of the Mar-a-Lago papers case proves again that it’s all about a witch hunt,” Kevin Cabrera, who worked as Trump’s Florida campaign manager in 2020, explained Wednesday in Milwaukee. “None of the lawsuits are about political issues or anything to do with his performance as president, they are part of the strategy that has been trying to bring him down since the very day he came down the escalator.”

Cabrera was referring to the theatrical announcement of Trump’s first presidential bid in 2015, when the reality TV star descended before the cameras in front of the gilded backdrop of Trump Tower in Manhattan to announce his intention to run for the White House. At the time, nobody took it too seriously.

On those stairs began one of the most incredible political stories of our time, a tale full of chapters in which his rivals wrote Trump off too often and too soon. Thursday will mark his first speech as nominee and as the survivor of an attempted assassination. And who knows if it will also be the beginning of the chapter of Trump’s story that propels him back to the White House.

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