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Trump AlmightyThe Republican Party Deifies The Donald
The GOP convention in Milwaukee made it clear that Donald Trump is more than just a candidate. For supporters, he is a religious figure. But Trump’s talk of national unity may have been informed by base politics.
Foto:
Callaghan O’Hare / REUTERS
By René Pfister in Milwaukee
22.07.2024, 12.19 Uhr
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When Donald Trump walks into the arena on Monday evening, not even 60 hours after the assassination attempt, the only indication that anything has changed is the white bandage on his right ear. Donald Trump seems strangely transformed on this sweltering summer evening in Milwaukee. The expression on his face is different from anything seen before.
What is it? Benevolence? Gratitude? Vulnerability?
DER SPIEGEL 30/2024
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 30/2024 (July 20th, 2024) of DER SPIEGEL.SPIEGEL International
Even his gait is less steady than usual. And when he raises his clenched fist into the air – which in the immediate aftermath of the shooting quickly became the new symbol of the MAGA movement – it seems strangely forced. Like the gesture of a politician merely going through the motions expected of him by the gathered crowd.
Did the attack change him? Did it change the Republican Party? When Reince Priebus, a party veteran and Trump’s former chief of staff, is asked about it, he says: “I do think ‘Make America One Again’ sounds pretty cool.” The Republicans, who weren’t even able to accept an election defeat, now want to be the messengers of reconciliation and healing?
Donald Trump with his sons Don Jr. (left) and Eric Foto: Carolyn Kaster / AP
It sounds absurd, but Trump adopted the message himself when he stepped onto the convention stage on Thursday – at least for a moment. “I am here tonight to lay out a vision for the whole nation,” he intoned, and said that political differences must not be demonized. It was a rather incredible message, coming as it did from a man who bears no small share of the responsibility for the rift – deeper than at almost any other time in American history – that runs through the United States.
Trump’s appeal for reconciliation, however, was nothing but a ploy to launch an attack on his opponent. He is not the one driving the country apart, he insisted, but the Democrats – by targeting him with a judicial “witch hunt.” They are, Trump said, “destroying our country.” The 78-year-old Republican candidate, it quickly became clear, has no interest in becoming a modern-day Ghandi.
The convention organizers had staged everything so perfectly. On the first evening, Trump refrained from taking the stage and drawing all the attention to himself, instead sitting down between J.D. Vance, his freshly chosen running mate, and Tim Scott, the Black Senator from South Carolina. It was supposed to be a sign of humility.
Trump patiently listened to a series of speakers who, based on appearance anyway, could just as easily been speaking at a gathering of Germany’s Green Party: a Black influencer supporting abortion rights; a migrant from Nicaragua with a heavy Hispanic accent; and a union leader, who reminded the Republicans that capitalism also has to benefit workers. The entire production was then tied up by a lawyer of Indian origin who put on her headscarf and recited a prayer, to which Trump listened with his eyes closed.
It almost seemed like the Republicans, who have been so bitterly opposed to what they describe as left-wing indoctrination in recent years, have become a bit “woke” themselves. The stage production on the first evening of the convention seemed like the culmination of the transformation of a party that once represented a white and prosperous America but was now seeking to poach those constituencies that have long formed the backbone of Democratic support: workers, Blacks and migrants who believe in the American dream.
It is a coalition that is so diverse and contradictory that it would tear apart any other party. But it is held together by Donald Trump, who is seen by his supporters as a gift from heaven – now more than ever after the shots fired in Pennsylvania. “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” said Trump during his Thursday speech.
“Our God still saves. He still delivers. And he still sets free.”
Tim Scott, Senator
As recently as eight years ago, Trump had to bring a deeply devout evangelical like Mike Pence on board to mollify Christian voters, who saw Trump as a playboy from New York with dubious sexual morals. Now, though, many of his supporters exalt Trump as an agent from heaven, protected by God.
Die Lage – zum Hören
The sanctification of Trump has progressed so far that he no longer needs people like Pence. The former vice president was smart enough to steer clear of Milwaukee. Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, now earns his money as an analyst for the broadcaster NBC, and when he tried to enter the arena on Monday evening, he had to wait with everyone else when the former president’s motorcade rolled up to the venue. He complained to a Secret Service officer, but with arms crossed and a look of pity on her face, she merely said: “Sorry sir.”
Trump’s narrow escape in Pennsylvania has given him an almost mythic standing among his followers. Foto: Brendan Smialowski / AFP
Trump flag in Texas Foto: Sipa USA / picture alliance
Trump alone now decides who is given power in the Republican party: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Who can still stop him, now that he has escaped death? President Joe Biden, the poor wretch who even two-thirds of Democrats, according to a poll this week, believe should head into retirement? In Milwaukee, reporters were glancing at their phones every couple of minutes to see if Biden had withdrawn from the race.
On the flight to the convention, Trump said in an interview that it was mere coincidence that he had been holding his head in such a manner that the bullet didn’t smash into his skull. “The chances of my making a perfect turn are probably one-tenth of 1 percent, so I’m not supposed to be here.” But Trump is very much alive, and initially sought to present himself as though his survival had been something of a religious experience. “The discord and division in our society must be healed,” he intoned.
It would, however, be rather premature to equate Trump with the Apostle Paul, who spread the message of love and forgiveness around the world. That became clear on Tuesday evening, when a video was shown at the convention in which Trump claimed that the last election had been stolen from him. And then the program called for several mothers to take the stage who said that Biden’s policies on migration and drug control were to blame for the death of their children.
“These are forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human, which are against people.”
Tucker Carlson
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, traveled to Milwaukee to demonstrate to the party that after the primary battle with Trump, he had now obediently got back in line. “America cannot afford four more years of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ presidency,” he called out from the stage, a joke that triggered a gracious smile from Trump, sitting in his box. “Weekend at Bernie’s” is a dark comedy from the 1980s in which two employees have to act as though their boss, who had been murdered by the mafia, was still alive.
In truth, Trump’s detour into benevolence was likely informed by political considerations. The images of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania – the fist held high, the blood running down his face – electrified the Republican base. But they are also reminiscent of Trump’s dark side – of the chaos and violence that surrounded his presidency, and which reached their apex with the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. When Trump spoke on Thursday, it quickly became clear just how threadbare his message of harmony is. He accused the Democrats of having used the pandemic to steal the election from him. And he said that his rival Joe Biden has done more damage to the country than the 10 worst presidents combined.
Media star Tucker Carlson in Milwaukee Foto: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP
Tucker Carlson, the right-wing media darling, was even more venomous. “I actually hate Joe Biden,” he said on Monday during an interview on a secondary stage with Kevin Roberts, the president of the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation, which is preparing policy for Trump’s second term.
Carlson is the media arm of the MAGA movement – the former Fox News anchor who was fired by media mogul Rupert Murdoch because of his sympathies for Russian President Vladimir Putin. For his 55 years, Carlson has enviably thick hair and his skin tone makes it look as though he just returned from a fishing expedition.
His particular skillset involves seeing sinister conspiracies everywhere all the time – of the kind that remain hidden to innocent citizens blinded by naivety. Biden, to take one example, isn’t supporting Ukraine because he wants to defend an oppressed nation from Russian imperial aggression. In Carlson’s telling, the president and the Democrats are part of a death cult intent on keeping the war machine alive for the sake of the killing it produces.
“What you’re seeing now is really not at all different in substance from what you saw in 1789 in France, from what you saw in 1936 in Spain, from what you saw in 1917 in Russia, from what you saw in 1975 in Phnom Penh,” says Carlson. “It’s all the same. These are forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human, which are against people.”
Carlson doesn’t go into detail on what, exactly, Joe Biden from Scranton, Pennsylvania has in common with the Kymer Rouge from Cambodia. Or with the French Revolution. But Carlson’s appeal is that he delivers the most preposterous, horrific ideas with the innocence of a St. Bernard puppy.
Carlson is without question the zaniest version of the MAGA revolution – the court jester who says things that even Trump seems to find too outlandish. But on the first day of the convention, he is greeted by the former president with a handshake and sits down just two seats away from him. Part of Trump’s recipe for success has been securing the support of voters who live with the conviction that things are never what they seem.
“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
Donald Trump
There is hardly any other country where conspiracy theories are as widespread as they are in the United States, a country which, since its founding, has been obsessed with the idea that the government in Washington has been – depending on the era – infiltrated by the illuminati, the communists or the Catholics. When Trump this week called his rival Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whose son secretly filmed the conversation), the former president validated Kennedy’s obsession that vaccinations against childhood diseases are actually harmful. Trump always seems to know what his counterpart wants to hear.
Indeed, it is impossible for Trump to be the great unifier because his movement contradicts such a role. Trump became big by fanning the flames of anger against Washington, the media and the elite. Fury is the source from which today’s Republican Party draws its strength – and Trump’s greatest promise for his comeback is revenge. “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” Trump said at a conference in early March 2023 in Maryland. It was a pledge of biblical force, but the message came right out of the Old Testament: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The convention in Milwaukee has changed nothing when it comes to Trump’s authoritarian bent, or to Republican plans to send thousands of civil servants packing after winning the election because they could stand in the way of Trump’s agenda. It is a radical program to fundamentally change America and its institutions, to strengthen the power of the president and to weaken the separation of power.
Trump’s announcement at the convention that J.D. Vance will be his running mate is part and parcel of that plan. The choice of Vance, a Catholic, was one of the most interesting of the entire gathering. Of all those under consideration for the post, Vance was by far the most radical. The 39-year-old has traveled a long road to get here – from starting out as the child of a mother who was a single parent and struggling with drug addiction in rural Ohio to becoming a soldier in the Marines who went on to study at Yale Law School. He wrote the bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” a book about his life that explains Trump’s rise to left-wing America, and which was praised by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Vance was long a Trump critic himself.
Trump supporters praying in Milwaukee Foto: Allison Dinner / EPA
A bit of pro-Trump artwork in Pennsylvania. GOP fans see their candidate as a messenger from God. Foto: Hannah Beier / REUTERS
“I can’t stomach Trump,” he said in a 2016 interview. “I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.” After Vance announced his candidacy in spring 2021 for a vacant Senate seat, he spent much of his campaign walking back critical comments he had made about Trump. “My biggest weakness as a candidate is that there are these video clips out there that can be used in attack advertisements,” Vance said in an interview with DER SPIEGEL in January 2022 in Ohio.
The accusation that Vance subjugated himself to Trump out of his own ambition does not seem far-fetched. In his Senate campaign, he never distanced himself from Trump’s claims that Biden stole the election. “I think that if what happened in America’s election in 2020 happened in Germany, you guys simply wouldn’t allow it,” he told DER SPIEGEL.
Vance has justified his switch to Team MAGA by pointing to liberal excesses. Many conservatives, he told the New York Times, have long had the feeling that they are being censored by the progressive camp – a development that he believes reached its peak with the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020. “There was nothing you were allowed to say,” he said. “Offending someone was an act of violence. I think a lot of us just said: ‘We’re done with this. We’re not playing this game, and we refuse to be policed in what we think and what we say.”
“No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”
J.D. Vance
Now, Vance has become one of the Republican Party’s most fervent culture warriors. He once said that his political style has become more combative in recent years. But in his speech at the convention, Vance struck a balance between moderation and sharp attacks on the Democrats. He called on the party, which has completely kowtowed to Trump, to once again engage in public debate when differences arise. And he mentioned the family of his wife Usha, a woman with Indian roots who he met at Yale. “Incredible people,” he said, referring to South Asian immigrants. “People who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways.” It was a sentence that sounded like a direct challenge to a party that has made fear of immigrants a key element of its brand.
Should Trump win the election, Vance will assist him in fulfilling his promise of getting rid of civil servants who stand in the way of the MAGA agenda. And he will also be one of the Republicans to join the battle against “woke” elite universities. In 2021, Vance held an address at the National Conservatism Conference called “The Universities Are the Enemy.”
Trump and Vance at the Republican convention Foto: Evan Vucci / AP
The choice of Vance shows just how confident Trump is going into the November election. “We’re going to win it anyway,” he said on Thursday – almost as if he no longer has to take the Democrats and Joe Biden seriously. At the same time, he made it clear that he sees Vance as his heir, the man to lead the MAGA movement into the future. And it seems that an heir might become necessary sooner rather than later.
Because Trump’s speech was also the low point of an otherwise perfectly staged convention. Still clearly shake by the assassination attempt, Trump delivered his remarks without vigor and without structure. Trump seemed so listless at times that he even managed to lose the overexcited delegates in Milwaukee. It stood in direct contrast to Vance’s enthusiastic speech on Wednesday, and it will be interesting to see how the balance of power develops in the coming months between Vance and a clearly aging Trump.
Europeans fear Vance primarily because of his foreign policy plans. Vance is in favor of striking a quick deal with Putin to bring the war in Ukraine to an end – a point on which he is in complete agreement with Trump. But in contrast to Trump, Vance does not flirt with the idea of leaving NATO. At the Munich Security Conference in February, he said: “No, I don’t think we should pull out of NATO, and no, I don’t think that we should abandon Europe. But yes, I think we should pivot. The United States has to focus more on East Asia … and Europe has to wake up to that fact.”
In Milwaukee, Vance said: “No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.” He is loyal to a foreign policy school of thought to which Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president, also belongs, as does Elbridge Colby, a Yale graduate who worked in the Defense Department during Trump’s first term and now leads a small consulting firm in Washington. All three of them are devout Catholics and they could ultimately form the core of a group that shapes security policy for a new Trump administration.
“Rearm yourselves. Be pragmatic, sober-minded, self-reliant, and willing and able to contribute to defense. Eschew highfalutin moralistic haranguing. This is the way forward for strong alliances.”
Elbridge Colby
There was plenty of speculation surrounding Roberts and Colby at the convention. The one is considered a possible chief of staff, while the other could end up as national security advisor. Colby insists that he only speaks for himself. He has long expressed the concern that the U.S. isn’t able to finance the war in Ukraine while at the same time preparing for a possible conflict with China over Taiwan.
“The message to allies is clear,” Colby told DER SPIEGEL once it was clear that Vance had been tapped as Trump’s running mate. “Rearm yourselves. Be pragmatic, sober-minded, self-reliant, and willing and able to contribute to defense. Eschew highfalutin moralistic haranguing. This is the way forward for strong alliances.”
On Monday, Colby was standing in the foyer of a Milwaukee concert house where the Heritage Foundation was holding a conference. When talking to Colby, a foreign diplomat or politician stops by almost every minute to hand him their card. Ever since Colby outlined his foreign policy plans in an interview with DER SPIEGEL in summer 2023, he has been bombarded with requests from Europe. Every European capital wants to know what is in store for Europe should Trump return to the White House.
One can’t accuse Colby of trying to make himself more important than he is. In almost every third sentence, he insists that he is not speaking for Trump. But Colby and his friend Roberts exude an aura of future power. Jens Spahn, the former German health minister, also sidled up to Colby to ask him a couple of questions.
Republican delegates in Milwaukee: Carefully staged convention Foto: Andrew Kelly / REUTERS
J.D. Vance speaking in Milwaukee Foto: Brendan Smialowski / AFP
Everything has become so difficult to foresee. A large number of German politicians and bureaucrats also turned up in Milwaukee in an effort to gain insight into Trump’s plans, including the German ambassador to the U.S., Andreas Michaelis; the German government’s coordinator for German-American relations, Michael Link; and German parliamentarian Metin Hakverdi. And so many members of the Bavarian center-right party Christian Social Union made the trip that they brought along their own U.S. expert, Dr. Josef Braml – who produced the insight that Trump is being influenced by a wealthy donor. All of them could be seen wandering around the convention hall with question marks writ large on their faces, hoping to be able to report back home what might be in store for Germany.
But Trump is so terribly unpredictable. On Wednesday evening, he was back to being the boisterously acerbic lout that we have come to expect. As reports began to come in that Biden had contracted COVID and images made the rounds of the president hardly being able to climb the stairs to Air Force One, Trump strode into the arena to the song “It’s a Man’s World.”
It sounded like a nasty joke about Biden’s pitiable state – and Don Jr., the former president’s hyperactive son, was on stage making fun of “broke bumbling Biden.”Indeed, Don Jr.’s comments no longer sounded much at all like love and reconciliation. Like so much in Donald Trump’s life, his stint as a saint was merely a brief phase.
Vance may want to remain in NATO, and Colby might be able to speak firmly yet amicably to the Europeans. But what if Trump has completely different plans? Vance might be the favorite of the Republicans and of the ex-president for the time being. But Trump can drop him at any time. Mike Pence has a thing or two to say about that. If there is one thing that Trump doesn’t like, it is subordinates who demonstrate too much independence.
Trump was close to leaving NATO once before. If he wanted too, he could decide do so should he return to the White House. He wouldn’t even have to ask for Vance’s permission. And that is giving the Europeans nightmares.
As midnight approached on Monday evening, a German parliamentarian could be found sitting in an empty sports bar in Milwaukee washing down the day’s impressions with a second beer. “It will never be as nice as it was under Biden,” he sighed.
Who Watches the Watchers? 