Over the last few months, in the run-up to the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, the party’s official Instagram page has been a running feed of MAGA iconography. There are illustrations of a buff Donald Trump riding a stallion and waving an American flag; of Trump in a cowboy hat on a packet of Marlboro Reds. The president isn’t on the ballot in November, but the Republican National Committee made it explicit: This would be, in the words of chairman Joe Gruters, “Trumpapalooza.”
So you can imagine my confusion when I arrived at the convention in the blazing Texas heat—temperatures cracked 100° on Wednesday—to find no sign of the president on the jumbotron outside of the arena. Where was our leader’s mug? I was assured this function is being held in celebration of him. After all, Trump ordered up the convention, a first for the Republican Party, and commanded the party to build the two-day event around his accomplishments.
My nerves were eased upon entry. The media credentials—the card I had to wear around my neck to access the event—featured a large photo of the president. Inside was a glittering dedication to Trump that would have made Rafael Trujillo blush. The arena’s corridors were dotted with blow-up photos of the president in the Oval Office or pumping his fist in the air in Butler. The merchandise stand sold hats declaring “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING,” mousepads depicting Trump the cowboy straddling a dashing horse, and one book: Eric Trump’s Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation. One elderly woman wore a mini-dress made entirely of printed-out photos of Trump taped together. We may have been in Texas, but the MAGA hats outnumbered the Stetsons. They called for making all manner of nouns great again, from “Farmers” to “Alabama.” A portly man with a handlebar mustache, wearing a loose golf polo and tight pants, wore a “Make America Hot Again” cap.
This is what Trump wanted. Typically, in a midterm election year when the president’s approval ratings are hovering in the low 30s as he wages an intractable war abroad that’s raising prices at home, a political party would urge its candidates to focus on their own races and put some distance between their campaigns and the White House. Trump rejected this approach, preferring to embrace the Democratic strategy of making the midterm election about him.
And so we got Trumpapalooza. “I’m asking you to pretend I’m the ballot!” he told the crowd, between riffs mocking Democrats and referring to his second term as “the most successful two years, financially and every other way, in the history of the presidency.” Even calling this a convention is a bit of a misnomer. There is no platform being debated, or candidates being nominated. This was a tarted-up Trump rally.
The president was preceded by a series of conservative stars including Adam Carrola, the reactionary comedian, and Ken Paxton, the Republican fighting to keep the Senate seat in Texas red. The crowd, which didn’t quite fill the American Airlines Center—home of the Dallas Mavericks—gobbled up the familiar buzzwords. “Trump!” Loud cheers. “Trans!” Loud boos. James Talarico, Paxton’s challenger in Texas, was a recurring target, as was Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive physician running for a Senate seat in Michigan.
