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Former U.S. President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16, 2024.
We should be worried about the far right’s Project 2025, but we should be horrified by what we’re seeing right now in 2024, right here in the all-American city of Milwaukee.
I came to the American Heartland to cover a political convention, but all I found was a tent revival, Brother Trump’s Traveling Salvation Show.
The Republican National Convention took just minutes after Monday’s opening gavel to officially nominate its Dear Leader for the third and probably not the last time. The roll call, once the highlight of past conventions, is now an empty ritual. A party platform that was probably written on a Mar-a-Lago cocktail napkin was rammed though with no dissent. RNC schedulers quickly liberated all four nights for the only real purpose they had here in Wisconsin.
The deification of Donald J. Trump.
I never thought I’d see a four-day national celebration of a presidential candidate who just 45 days earlier had been convicted on 34 felony charges.
The undulating white hats that staked a claim for Texas; the buttoned-down accountants under their ill-fitting, newly purchased red MAGA hats; and the tightly-wound blonde women in their adult cheerleading outfits—all of them populated the crowded floor of the Fiserv Forum wearing a badge that read “Delegate,” but they were only extras in the ultimate reality show. They mildly whooped for the transphobic jokes and Second Amendment bravado of faceless GOP congressional candidates but by 8 pm Central most were sucked by a cosmic force toward the back corner of the floor, iPhones aloft to capture a moment of political transubstantiation.
It reaches fever pitch as the Village People’s gay disco anthem “Y.M.C.A.” floods the massive basketball arena, with images of the Leader’s goofball dancing on a big screen. A house band segues into The Romantics’ “What I Like About You” as he finally enters the long tunnel and climbs to his seat, white bandage covering the stigmata of his right ear, which bled from Butler, Pennsylvania, to Milwaukee for the salvation of America and this delirious throng.
In the minutes that follow, vanquished rivals like Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plead for mercy by pledging their undying fealty. The faithful thank their God for intervening Saturday to save Trump and save America. Eventually, the speeches all start sounding like a riff on The Manchurian Candidate: “Donald J. Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
But the camera is drawn, like a moth to flame, to Trump—head-cocked, absorbing the adulation, probably hoping the TV talking heads are speculating wildly about this obviously changed man. Here in Milwaukee, the political pundits finally saw the thing they’ve been pleading for—unity—and what that really looks like. It looks a lot like Jonestown.
“It seems that our party is really getting unified quite well,” Daniel Bobay, an ex-Californian who retired near Sulphur Springs, Texas, and was attending his first RNC as an alternate delegate, told me inside the Fiserv Forum. It was a variation of a quote I heard again and again and again. Bobay said he hopes the Trump shooting will reduce overheated rhetoric—but only from the media, and not especially from Republicans. “That’s always been the message,” he said with a slight chuckle, referring to tough talk on immigration. “You can’t only build half the wall, or deport only half the people.”
Like any cult, the real mysticism in Milwaukee was the things that went unsaid. I never thought I’d see a four-day national celebration of a presidential candidate who just 45 days earlier had been convicted on 34 felony charges, stemming from his efforts to win the 2016 election by paying off the porn star who would later testify she had sex with him.
But I’m much, much more flabbergasted by how quickly those convictions just vanished from your TV screen and the national conversation—just like the massive financial fraud, just like the E. Jean Carroll rape case, just like the taking of our top secret documents, just like the role he played in trying to tamper with his 2020 election defeat, and his summoning of a violent mob to the U.S. Capitol.
Any need to “tone it down” or “lower the national temperature” after Saturday’s shooting in Butler doesn’t undo the fact that all of those disqualifying things have happened. But here’s the other thing: Nobody at the RNC was really toning it down or lowering the temperature. Instead, it was like a weeklong heat dome of baseless accusation settled over eastern Wisconsin.
What’s more outrageous—that Republicans only want the rhetoric cooled off toward them? Or that the elite media is letting them get away with it?
The harsh tone was set early on Monday, when Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson welcomed the faithful to his home state by declaring “the Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values, and our people.” Johnson then claimed that “the wrong speech” had been stuck into the teleprompter.
Really? In that case, the teleprompter guy must have brought all the wrong speeches. Because if there was some kind of memo about a new GOP message of peace, love, and understanding, it was not widely circulated. As I looked on from the upper deck Tuesday night, I heard a string of “everyday Americans” present a nonstop saga of murder, rape, and drug-related deaths. I wasn’t sure at times if I was watching the RNC or if Comcast had reactivated FEARnet. While some of the crimes were committed by undocumented migrants and others they sought to blame on liberal prosecutors, these truly awful, heartbreaking incidents were always tied back to President Joe Biden.
“I hold Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—the border czar, what a joke—and every Democrat who supports open borders, responsible for the death of my son,” a Southern California mom named Anne Fundner, who lost her 15-year-old son to a fentanyl overdose, told the delegates. Fundner burst into tears while the crowd erupted in chants of “Joe must go!” It was a moment which, like so many at the RNC, turned only emotional dials, without context about any link between Biden’s actual policies—or Trump’s, for that matter—and the calamity that befell Fundner’s son.
And look, no one expects convention goers to mount the RNC podium and admit that Biden’s border policies—which refugee advocates say are too strict and too similar to what Trump did—and his recent curbs on asylum have brought southern border crossings to their lowest levels of the 2020s, But did anyone expect that emotional dog-whistle speeches like Fundner’s would be greeted with delegates waving pre-made placards, “Stop Biden’s Border Bloodbath”?
Did they bring “the wrong signs,” just like Johnson brought “the wrong speech”? Or is this how the Republican Party lowers the temperature, even as it commits a type of stochastic terrorism by describing the most awful rapes and murders and telling America: Biden did this? Their version of “tone it down” is...”bloodbath”? Seriously? And yet when I walked around the inner bowels of the Fiserv Forum, RNC delegates swore that only Democrats are responsible for violent rhetoric.
“The level of violent rhetoric on the left has been escalating for years—they’re awful,” Bob Witsenhausen, the GOP county chair of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an alternate delegate wearing a red MAGA hat autographed by Laura Loomer, told me. He insisted that the “bloodbath” signs were OK because they address undocumented migrants—but he claimed Biden is “trying to label every MAGA Republican as a domestic terrorist.” He slammed Black Lives Matter, but when I asked about the violence on January 6, 2021, he replied with debunked tales about undercover FBI and “antifa” infiltrators. “Jan. 6 was a set up. Anybody who has their eyes open can see that.”
The mostly desolate city blocks here—with cops on bicycles and helicopters and in large gaggles of officers on street corners—feel like a sneak peek at what Trump has in store for Democratic-run cities if he wins in November.
But paranoia strikes deep. Big-time Republicans here in Milwaukee like Donald Trump Jr. and the veep pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, both said in interviews that “they” had tried to kill the GOP nominee in Butler County. Wait, I thought the GOP absolutely hates “preferred pronouns.” Why are they calling a 20-year-old registered Republican male “they”? What’s more outrageous—that Republicans only want the rhetoric cooled off toward them? Or that the elite media is letting them get away with it?
The bubble of disinformation walled off in downtown Milwaukee from the rest of America by a maze of concrete barriers could be suffocating at times. I kept wondering one thing: What would the great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson have made of all of this? How long before he started seeing hideous green lizards crawling from underneath the MAGA hats of these rhinestone cowboys, before the numbing conformity revealed the psychedelic terror of the grim American future that crawls just underneath the surface?
But even if everything they said here about Biden and his porous border were actually true, there still wouldn’t be enough illicit pharmaceuticals to satisfy the Hunter S. Thompson of 1972, or to make sense of this Republican Kool-Aid acid test. Besides, America needs less hallucination and more clarity.
The 2024 RNC is indeed all about unity, but only the creepiest and most cultist kinds. I saw unity of fear, in a party of ritual humiliation where dissenters like Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney are tossed down the memory hole. I saw the unity of people professing their love of community and a so-called “real America” that looks like the floor of the Fiserv Forum, overwhelmingly white, with any “different” folks pushed down the escalators.
We should be worried about the far right’s Project 2025, but we should be horrified by what we’re seeing right now in 2024, right here in the all-American city of Milwaukee. The cult of personality around Donald Trump is already creating its own reality, starting with his campaign’s refusal to release any medical information about his treatment or prognosis after Saturday’s shooting.
Monday’s shock cancellation of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” proved that Big Media can be cowed from asking any tough questions that might pierce this bubble. The mostly desolate city blocks here—with cops on bicycles and helicopters and in large gaggles of officers on street corners—feel like a sneak peek at what Trump has in store for Democratic-run cities if he wins in November.
On Tuesday afternoon, five members of the RNC’s massive security force—imported from Columbus, Ohio, patrolling in a unfamiliar neighborhood one mile away from the Fiserv Forum—confronted a 43-year-old homeless man wielding a knife in an apparent altercation and killed him. The incident is still under investigation, but it felt like an opening volley of a Trump presidency that promises to send law enforcement and even troops into cities like Milwaukee, to round up the homeless or knock on the doors of undocumented migrants.
“Had that been Milwaukee PD, that man would be alive right now,” a neighborhood resident, David Porter, told HuffPost. “I know that because they know him.” You could argue that the homeless man, Samuel Sharpe, from the wrong side of the concrete barriers, is the first victim of a Trump restoration. And as the cult of Donald Trump swoons and sways toward November with little resistance, you can probably guarantee he won’t be the last.
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I came to the American Heartland to cover a political convention, but all I found was a tent revival, Brother Trump’s Traveling Salvation Show.
The Republican National Convention took just minutes after Monday’s opening gavel to officially nominate its Dear Leader for the third and probably not the last time. The roll call, once the highlight of past conventions, is now an empty ritual. A party platform that was probably written on a Mar-a-Lago cocktail napkin was rammed though with no dissent. RNC schedulers quickly liberated all four nights for the only real purpose they had here in Wisconsin.
The deification of Donald J. Trump.
I never thought I’d see a four-day national celebration of a presidential candidate who just 45 days earlier had been convicted on 34 felony charges.
The undulating white hats that staked a claim for Texas; the buttoned-down accountants under their ill-fitting, newly purchased red MAGA hats; and the tightly-wound blonde women in their adult cheerleading outfits—all of them populated the crowded floor of the Fiserv Forum wearing a badge that read “Delegate,” but they were only extras in the ultimate reality show. They mildly whooped for the transphobic jokes and Second Amendment bravado of faceless GOP congressional candidates but by 8 pm Central most were sucked by a cosmic force toward the back corner of the floor, iPhones aloft to capture a moment of political transubstantiation.
It reaches fever pitch as the Village People’s gay disco anthem “Y.M.C.A.” floods the massive basketball arena, with images of the Leader’s goofball dancing on a big screen. A house band segues into The Romantics’ “What I Like About You” as he finally enters the long tunnel and climbs to his seat, white bandage covering the stigmata of his right ear, which bled from Butler, Pennsylvania, to Milwaukee for the salvation of America and this delirious throng.
In the minutes that follow, vanquished rivals like Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plead for mercy by pledging their undying fealty. The faithful thank their God for intervening Saturday to save Trump and save America. Eventually, the speeches all start sounding like a riff on The Manchurian Candidate: “Donald J. Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
But the camera is drawn, like a moth to flame, to Trump—head-cocked, absorbing the adulation, probably hoping the TV talking heads are speculating wildly about this obviously changed man. Here in Milwaukee, the political pundits finally saw the thing they’ve been pleading for—unity—and what that really looks like. It looks a lot like Jonestown.
“It seems that our party is really getting unified quite well,” Daniel Bobay, an ex-Californian who retired near Sulphur Springs, Texas, and was attending his first RNC as an alternate delegate, told me inside the Fiserv Forum. It was a variation of a quote I heard again and again and again. Bobay said he hopes the Trump shooting will reduce overheated rhetoric—but only from the media, and not especially from Republicans. “That’s always been the message,” he said with a slight chuckle, referring to tough talk on immigration. “You can’t only build half the wall, or deport only half the people.”
Like any cult, the real mysticism in Milwaukee was the things that went unsaid. I never thought I’d see a four-day national celebration of a presidential candidate who just 45 days earlier had been convicted on 34 felony charges, stemming from his efforts to win the 2016 election by paying off the porn star who would later testify she had sex with him.
But I’m much, much more flabbergasted by how quickly those convictions just vanished from your TV screen and the national conversation—just like the massive financial fraud, just like the E. Jean Carroll rape case, just like the taking of our top secret documents, just like the role he played in trying to tamper with his 2020 election defeat, and his summoning of a violent mob to the U.S. Capitol.
Any need to “tone it down” or “lower the national temperature” after Saturday’s shooting in Butler doesn’t undo the fact that all of those disqualifying things have happened. But here’s the other thing: Nobody at the RNC was really toning it down or lowering the temperature. Instead, it was like a weeklong heat dome of baseless accusation settled over eastern Wisconsin.
What’s more outrageous—that Republicans only want the rhetoric cooled off toward them? Or that the elite media is letting them get away with it?
The harsh tone was set early on Monday, when Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson welcomed the faithful to his home state by declaring “the Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values, and our people.” Johnson then claimed that “the wrong speech” had been stuck into the teleprompter.
Really? In that case, the teleprompter guy must have brought all the wrong speeches. Because if there was some kind of memo about a new GOP message of peace, love, and understanding, it was not widely circulated. As I looked on from the upper deck Tuesday night, I heard a string of “everyday Americans” present a nonstop saga of murder, rape, and drug-related deaths. I wasn’t sure at times if I was watching the RNC or if Comcast had reactivated FEARnet. While some of the crimes were committed by undocumented migrants and others they sought to blame on liberal prosecutors, these truly awful, heartbreaking incidents were always tied back to President Joe Biden.
“I hold Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—the border czar, what a joke—and every Democrat who supports open borders, responsible for the death of my son,” a Southern California mom named Anne Fundner, who lost her 15-year-old son to a fentanyl overdose, told the delegates. Fundner burst into tears while the crowd erupted in chants of “Joe must go!” It was a moment which, like so many at the RNC, turned only emotional dials, without context about any link between Biden’s actual policies—or Trump’s, for that matter—and the calamity that befell Fundner’s son.
And look, no one expects convention goers to mount the RNC podium and admit that Biden’s border policies—which refugee advocates say are too strict and too similar to what Trump did—and his recent curbs on asylum have brought southern border crossings to their lowest levels of the 2020s, But did anyone expect that emotional dog-whistle speeches like Fundner’s would be greeted with delegates waving pre-made placards, “Stop Biden’s Border Bloodbath”?
Did they bring “the wrong signs,” just like Johnson brought “the wrong speech”? Or is this how the Republican Party lowers the temperature, even as it commits a type of stochastic terrorism by describing the most awful rapes and murders and telling America: Biden did this? Their version of “tone it down” is...”bloodbath”? Seriously? And yet when I walked around the inner bowels of the Fiserv Forum, RNC delegates swore that only Democrats are responsible for violent rhetoric.
“The level of violent rhetoric on the left has been escalating for years—they’re awful,” Bob Witsenhausen, the GOP county chair of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an alternate delegate wearing a red MAGA hat autographed by Laura Loomer, told me. He insisted that the “bloodbath” signs were OK because they address undocumented migrants—but he claimed Biden is “trying to label every MAGA Republican as a domestic terrorist.” He slammed Black Lives Matter, but when I asked about the violence on January 6, 2021, he replied with debunked tales about undercover FBI and “antifa” infiltrators. “Jan. 6 was a set up. Anybody who has their eyes open can see that.”
The mostly desolate city blocks here—with cops on bicycles and helicopters and in large gaggles of officers on street corners—feel like a sneak peek at what Trump has in store for Democratic-run cities if he wins in November.
But paranoia strikes deep. Big-time Republicans here in Milwaukee like Donald Trump Jr. and the veep pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, both said in interviews that “they” had tried to kill the GOP nominee in Butler County. Wait, I thought the GOP absolutely hates “preferred pronouns.” Why are they calling a 20-year-old registered Republican male “they”? What’s more outrageous—that Republicans only want the rhetoric cooled off toward them? Or that the elite media is letting them get away with it?
The bubble of disinformation walled off in downtown Milwaukee from the rest of America by a maze of concrete barriers could be suffocating at times. I kept wondering one thing: What would the great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson have made of all of this? How long before he started seeing hideous green lizards crawling from underneath the MAGA hats of these rhinestone cowboys, before the numbing conformity revealed the psychedelic terror of the grim American future that crawls just underneath the surface?
But even if everything they said here about Biden and his porous border were actually true, there still wouldn’t be enough illicit pharmaceuticals to satisfy the Hunter S. Thompson of 1972, or to make sense of this Republican Kool-Aid acid test. Besides, America needs less hallucination and more clarity.
The 2024 RNC is indeed all about unity, but only the creepiest and most cultist kinds. I saw unity of fear, in a party of ritual humiliation where dissenters like Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney are tossed down the memory hole. I saw the unity of people professing their love of community and a so-called “real America” that looks like the floor of the Fiserv Forum, overwhelmingly white, with any “different” folks pushed down the escalators.
We should be worried about the far right’s Project 2025, but we should be horrified by what we’re seeing right now in 2024, right here in the all-American city of Milwaukee. The cult of personality around Donald Trump is already creating its own reality, starting with his campaign’s refusal to release any medical information about his treatment or prognosis after Saturday’s shooting.
Monday’s shock cancellation of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” proved that Big Media can be cowed from asking any tough questions that might pierce this bubble. The mostly desolate city blocks here—with cops on bicycles and helicopters and in large gaggles of officers on street corners—feel like a sneak peek at what Trump has in store for Democratic-run cities if he wins in November.
On Tuesday afternoon, five members of the RNC’s massive security force—imported from Columbus, Ohio, patrolling in a unfamiliar neighborhood one mile away from the Fiserv Forum—confronted a 43-year-old homeless man wielding a knife in an apparent altercation and killed him. The incident is still under investigation, but it felt like an opening volley of a Trump presidency that promises to send law enforcement and even troops into cities like Milwaukee, to round up the homeless or knock on the doors of undocumented migrants.
“Had that been Milwaukee PD, that man would be alive right now,” a neighborhood resident, David Porter, told HuffPost. “I know that because they know him.” You could argue that the homeless man, Samuel Sharpe, from the wrong side of the concrete barriers, is the first victim of a Trump restoration. And as the cult of Donald Trump swoons and sways toward November with little resistance, you can probably guarantee he won’t be the last.
I came to the American Heartland to cover a political convention, but all I found was a tent revival, Brother Trump’s Traveling Salvation Show.
The Republican National Convention took just minutes after Monday’s opening gavel to officially nominate its Dear Leader for the third and probably not the last time. The roll call, once the highlight of past conventions, is now an empty ritual. A party platform that was probably written on a Mar-a-Lago cocktail napkin was rammed though with no dissent. RNC schedulers quickly liberated all four nights for the only real purpose they had here in Wisconsin.
The deification of Donald J. Trump.
I never thought I’d see a four-day national celebration of a presidential candidate who just 45 days earlier had been convicted on 34 felony charges.
The undulating white hats that staked a claim for Texas; the buttoned-down accountants under their ill-fitting, newly purchased red MAGA hats; and the tightly-wound blonde women in their adult cheerleading outfits—all of them populated the crowded floor of the Fiserv Forum wearing a badge that read “Delegate,” but they were only extras in the ultimate reality show. They mildly whooped for the transphobic jokes and Second Amendment bravado of faceless GOP congressional candidates but by 8 pm Central most were sucked by a cosmic force toward the back corner of the floor, iPhones aloft to capture a moment of political transubstantiation.
It reaches fever pitch as the Village People’s gay disco anthem “Y.M.C.A.” floods the massive basketball arena, with images of the Leader’s goofball dancing on a big screen. A house band segues into The Romantics’ “What I Like About You” as he finally enters the long tunnel and climbs to his seat, white bandage covering the stigmata of his right ear, which bled from Butler, Pennsylvania, to Milwaukee for the salvation of America and this delirious throng.
In the minutes that follow, vanquished rivals like Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plead for mercy by pledging their undying fealty. The faithful thank their God for intervening Saturday to save Trump and save America. Eventually, the speeches all start sounding like a riff on The Manchurian Candidate: “Donald J. Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
But the camera is drawn, like a moth to flame, to Trump—head-cocked, absorbing the adulation, probably hoping the TV talking heads are speculating wildly about this obviously changed man. Here in Milwaukee, the political pundits finally saw the thing they’ve been pleading for—unity—and what that really looks like. It looks a lot like Jonestown.
“It seems that our party is really getting unified quite well,” Daniel Bobay, an ex-Californian who retired near Sulphur Springs, Texas, and was attending his first RNC as an alternate delegate, told me inside the Fiserv Forum. It was a variation of a quote I heard again and again and again. Bobay said he hopes the Trump shooting will reduce overheated rhetoric—but only from the media, and not especially from Republicans. “That’s always been the message,” he said with a slight chuckle, referring to tough talk on immigration. “You can’t only build half the wall, or deport only half the people.”
Like any cult, the real mysticism in Milwaukee was the things that went unsaid. I never thought I’d see a four-day national celebration of a presidential candidate who just 45 days earlier had been convicted on 34 felony charges, stemming from his efforts to win the 2016 election by paying off the porn star who would later testify she had sex with him.
But I’m much, much more flabbergasted by how quickly those convictions just vanished from your TV screen and the national conversation—just like the massive financial fraud, just like the E. Jean Carroll rape case, just like the taking of our top secret documents, just like the role he played in trying to tamper with his 2020 election defeat, and his summoning of a violent mob to the U.S. Capitol.
Any need to “tone it down” or “lower the national temperature” after Saturday’s shooting in Butler doesn’t undo the fact that all of those disqualifying things have happened. But here’s the other thing: Nobody at the RNC was really toning it down or lowering the temperature. Instead, it was like a weeklong heat dome of baseless accusation settled over eastern Wisconsin.
What’s more outrageous—that Republicans only want the rhetoric cooled off toward them? Or that the elite media is letting them get away with it?
The harsh tone was set early on Monday, when Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson welcomed the faithful to his home state by declaring “the Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values, and our people.” Johnson then claimed that “the wrong speech” had been stuck into the teleprompter.
Really? In that case, the teleprompter guy must have brought all the wrong speeches. Because if there was some kind of memo about a new GOP message of peace, love, and understanding, it was not widely circulated. As I looked on from the upper deck Tuesday night, I heard a string of “everyday Americans” present a nonstop saga of murder, rape, and drug-related deaths. I wasn’t sure at times if I was watching the RNC or if Comcast had reactivated FEARnet. While some of the crimes were committed by undocumented migrants and others they sought to blame on liberal prosecutors, these truly awful, heartbreaking incidents were always tied back to President Joe Biden.
“I hold Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—the border czar, what a joke—and every Democrat who supports open borders, responsible for the death of my son,” a Southern California mom named Anne Fundner, who lost her 15-year-old son to a fentanyl overdose, told the delegates. Fundner burst into tears while the crowd erupted in chants of “Joe must go!” It was a moment which, like so many at the RNC, turned only emotional dials, without context about any link between Biden’s actual policies—or Trump’s, for that matter—and the calamity that befell Fundner’s son.
And look, no one expects convention goers to mount the RNC podium and admit that Biden’s border policies—which refugee advocates say are too strict and too similar to what Trump did—and his recent curbs on asylum have brought southern border crossings to their lowest levels of the 2020s, But did anyone expect that emotional dog-whistle speeches like Fundner’s would be greeted with delegates waving pre-made placards, “Stop Biden’s Border Bloodbath”?
Did they bring “the wrong signs,” just like Johnson brought “the wrong speech”? Or is this how the Republican Party lowers the temperature, even as it commits a type of stochastic terrorism by describing the most awful rapes and murders and telling America: Biden did this? Their version of “tone it down” is...”bloodbath”? Seriously? And yet when I walked around the inner bowels of the Fiserv Forum, RNC delegates swore that only Democrats are responsible for violent rhetoric.
“The level of violent rhetoric on the left has been escalating for years—they’re awful,” Bob Witsenhausen, the GOP county chair of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an alternate delegate wearing a red MAGA hat autographed by Laura Loomer, told me. He insisted that the “bloodbath” signs were OK because they address undocumented migrants—but he claimed Biden is “trying to label every MAGA Republican as a domestic terrorist.” He slammed Black Lives Matter, but when I asked about the violence on January 6, 2021, he replied with debunked tales about undercover FBI and “antifa” infiltrators. “Jan. 6 was a set up. Anybody who has their eyes open can see that.”
The mostly desolate city blocks here—with cops on bicycles and helicopters and in large gaggles of officers on street corners—feel like a sneak peek at what Trump has in store for Democratic-run cities if he wins in November.
But paranoia strikes deep. Big-time Republicans here in Milwaukee like Donald Trump Jr. and the veep pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, both said in interviews that “they” had tried to kill the GOP nominee in Butler County. Wait, I thought the GOP absolutely hates “preferred pronouns.” Why are they calling a 20-year-old registered Republican male “they”? What’s more outrageous—that Republicans only want the rhetoric cooled off toward them? Or that the elite media is letting them get away with it?
The bubble of disinformation walled off in downtown Milwaukee from the rest of America by a maze of concrete barriers could be suffocating at times. I kept wondering one thing: What would the great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson have made of all of this? How long before he started seeing hideous green lizards crawling from underneath the MAGA hats of these rhinestone cowboys, before the numbing conformity revealed the psychedelic terror of the grim American future that crawls just underneath the surface?
But even if everything they said here about Biden and his porous border were actually true, there still wouldn’t be enough illicit pharmaceuticals to satisfy the Hunter S. Thompson of 1972, or to make sense of this Republican Kool-Aid acid test. Besides, America needs less hallucination and more clarity.
The 2024 RNC is indeed all about unity, but only the creepiest and most cultist kinds. I saw unity of fear, in a party of ritual humiliation where dissenters like Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney are tossed down the memory hole. I saw the unity of people professing their love of community and a so-called “real America” that looks like the floor of the Fiserv Forum, overwhelmingly white, with any “different” folks pushed down the escalators.
We should be worried about the far right’s Project 2025, but we should be horrified by what we’re seeing right now in 2024, right here in the all-American city of Milwaukee. The cult of personality around Donald Trump is already creating its own reality, starting with his campaign’s refusal to release any medical information about his treatment or prognosis after Saturday’s shooting.
Monday’s shock cancellation of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” proved that Big Media can be cowed from asking any tough questions that might pierce this bubble. The mostly desolate city blocks here—with cops on bicycles and helicopters and in large gaggles of officers on street corners—feel like a sneak peek at what Trump has in store for Democratic-run cities if he wins in November.
On Tuesday afternoon, five members of the RNC’s massive security force—imported from Columbus, Ohio, patrolling in a unfamiliar neighborhood one mile away from the Fiserv Forum—confronted a 43-year-old homeless man wielding a knife in an apparent altercation and killed him. The incident is still under investigation, but it felt like an opening volley of a Trump presidency that promises to send law enforcement and even troops into cities like Milwaukee, to round up the homeless or knock on the doors of undocumented migrants.
“Had that been Milwaukee PD, that man would be alive right now,” a neighborhood resident, David Porter, told HuffPost. “I know that because they know him.” You could argue that the homeless man, Samuel Sharpe, from the wrong side of the concrete barriers, is the first victim of a Trump restoration. And as the cult of Donald Trump swoons and sways toward November with little resistance, you can probably guarantee he won’t be the last.
"What is it going to take for Senate Republicans to oppose this unfit nominee? Every Republican senator who votes to confirm Bove will be complicit in undermining the rule of law and judicial independence."
After a second whistleblower came forward claiming that Emil Bove III instructed attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice to ignore federal court orders, his critics on Friday renewed calls for the Senate to reject the DOJ official's appointment as an appellate judge.
"Evidence is growing that Emil Bove urged Department of Justice lawyers to ignore federal court orders. That alone should disqualify him from a lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful courts in our country," said Sean Eldridge, president and founder of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, in a statement.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced in late May that he would nominate Bove, his former personal attorney, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. Then, last month, a whistleblower complaint was filed by Erez Reuveni, who was fired from the DOJ's Office of Immigration Litigation in April after expressing concerns about the Kilmar Ábrego García case.
On Friday, as the Republican-controlled Senate was moving toward confirming Bove, the group Whistleblower Aid announced that another former Justice Department lawyer, whose name is not being disclosed, "has lawfully disclosed evidence to the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General that corroborates the thrust of the whistleblower claims" from Reuveni.
"Loyalty to one individual must never outweigh supporting and protecting the fundamental rights of those living in the United States."
"What we're seeing here is something I never thought would be possible on such a wide scale: federal prosecutors appointed by the Trump administration intentionally presenting dubious if not outright false evidence to a court of jurisdiction in cases that impact a person's fundamental rights not only under our Constitution, but their natural rights as humans," said Whistleblower Aid chief legal counsel Andrew Bakaj in a statement.
"What this means is that federal career attorneys who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution are now being pressured to abdicate that promise in favor of fealty to a single person, specifically Donald Trump. Loyalty to one individual must never outweigh supporting and protecting the fundamental rights of those living in the United States," Bakaj added. "Our client and Mr. Reuveni are true patriots—prioritizing their commitment to democracy over advancing their careers."
Bove has also faced mounting opposition—including from dozens of former judges—due to his embrace of the so-called "unitary executive theory" as well as his positions on a potential third Trump term and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by the president's supporters.
The Senate on Thursday voted 50-48 to proceed with the consideration of Bove's nomination. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) joined all Democrats in opposition. Responding in a statement, Demand Justice interim executive director Maggie Jo Buchanan warned that "Bove will be a stain on the judiciary if confirmed."
"Voting to confirm Trump's judicial nominees to lifetime seats on the federal bench, as he wages a war on the very idea of judicial independence, is an unacceptable choice for any senator who believes in our democracy and the importance of individual rights," said Buchanan, who also blasted the Senate's Tuesday confirmation of Joshua Divine to be a U.S. district judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri.
"Trump and his MAGA allies are helping him consolidate power in the executive branch, attacking judges who dare to rule against his interests, and targeting Trump's perceived political enemies—all while seemingly unconcerned about the future this sets up for our nation," she stressed. "Every senator will have to decide where they stand when it comes to this assault on our country's values—and that choice will not be forgotten."
After news of the second whistleblower complaint broke on Friday, Stand Up America's Eldridge declared that "again and again, Bove has proven he lacks the temperament, integrity, and independence to serve on the federal bench. He's nothing more than a political foot soldier doing Trump's bidding."
"What is it going to take for Senate Republicans to oppose this unfit nominee?" he added. "Every Republican senator who votes to confirm Bove will be complicit in undermining the rule of law and judicial independence."
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," said one Democratic senator.
While welcoming reporting that the Trump administration will release more than $5 billion in federal funding for schools that it has been withholding for nearly a month, U.S. educators and others said Friday that the funds should never have been held up in the first place and warned that the attempt to do so was just one part of an ongoing campaign to undermine public education.
The Trump administration placed nearly $7 billion in federal education funding for K-12 public schools under review last month, then released $1.3 billion of it last week amid legal action and widespread backlash. An administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Washington Post that all reviews of remaining funding are now over.
"There is no good reason for the chaos and stress this president has inflicted on students, teachers, and parents across America for the last month, and it shouldn't take widespread blowback for this administration to do its job and simply get the funding out the door that Congress has delivered to help students," U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Friday.
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," Murray added. "You don't thank a burglar for returning your cash after you've spent a month figuring out if you'd have to sell your house to make up the difference."
🚨After unlawfully withholding billions in education funding for schools, the Trump Admin. has reversed course.This is a massive victory for students, educators, & families who depend on these essential resources.And it's a testament to public pressure & relentless organizing.
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— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@pressley.house.gov) July 25, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward—which represents plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's funding freeze—said Friday that "if these reports are true, this is a major victory for public education and the communities it serves."
"This news following our legal challenge is a direct result of collective action by educators, families, and advocates across the country," Perryman asserted. "These funds are critical to keeping teachers in classrooms, supporting students in vulnerable conditions, and ensuring schools can offer the programs and services that every child deserves."
"While this development shows that legal and public pressure can make a difference, school districts, parents, and educators should not have to take the administration to court to secure funds for their students," she added. "Our promise to the people remains: We will go to court to protect the rights and well-being of all people living in America."
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes—a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit challenging the withholding—attributed the administration's backpedaling to litigatory pressure, arguing that the funding "should never have been withheld in the first place."
They released the 7 B IN SCHOOL FUNDS!! This is a huge win. It means fighting back matters. Fighting for what kids & communities need is always the right thing to do! www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
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— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association—the largest U.S. labor union—said in a statement: "Playing games with students' futures has real-world consequences. School districts in every state have been scrambling to figure out how they will continue to meet student needs without this vital federal funding, and many students in parts of the country have already headed back to school. These reckless funding delays have undermined planning, staffing, and support services at a time when schools should be focused on preparing students for success."
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education—starving it of resources, sowing distrust, and pushing privatization at the expense of the nation's most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "And they are doing this at the same time Congress has passed a budget bill that will devastate our students, schools, and communities by slashing funds meant for public education, healthcare, and keeping students from their school meals—all to finance massive tax breaks for billionaires."
While expanding support for private education, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month weakens public school programs including before- and after-school initiatives and services for English language learners.
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education."
Trump also signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of shutting down the Department of Education—a longtime goal of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led roadmap for a far-right takeover and gutting of the federal government closely linked to Trump, despite his unconvincing efforts to distance himself from the highly controversial and unpopular plan.
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office determined that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department illegally impounded crucial funds from the Head Start program, which provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and other services to low-income families.
"Instead of spending the last many weeks figuring out how to improve after-school options and get our kids' reading and math scores up, because of President Trump, communities across the country have been forced to spend their time cutting back on tutoring options and sorting out how many teachers they will have to lay off," Murray noted.
"It's time for President Trump, Secretary McMahon, and [Office of Management and Budget Director] Russ Vought to stop playing games with students' futures and families' livelihoods—and end their illegal assault on our students and their schools," the senator added.
"You want history books to not record you as an evil genocide supporter?" said one organizer. "You need to actually make an impact, NOW."
U.S. college students are still facing punishment for protesting Israel's U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza and its starvation of more than 2 million Palestinians there, with Columbia University announcing this week the suspension and expulsion of dozens of students who spoke out over the past year.
But a number of observers have pointed to a shift in the rhetoric of some of the student organizers' biggest detractors in recent days, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notably saying Thursday that "thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of starvation while trucks full of food sit waiting across the border" and calling for "the full flow of humanitarian assistance" to be restored.
Clinton didn't mention the Israeli blockade that has kept food from reaching Palestinians, more than 120 of whom have now died of starvation, or the at least $12.5 billion in military aid the U.S. has provided to Israel since the blockade first began in October 2023—in violation of U.S. laws prohibiting the government from giving military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid.
The former Democratic presidential nominee also didn't acknowledge the remarks she made in May 2024 about the campus protests that were spreading across the country, with students demanding that their schools divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and that the country end its support for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
At the time, Clinton said students who oppose Israel's policies in Gaza and the West Bank "don't know very much" about the conflict there. Clinton and other politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties have repeated the familiar phrase, "Israel has a right to defend itself" as the IDF has attacked so-called "safe zones," hospitals, and refugee camps.
Some suggested her comments on Thursday appeared to be those of an influential political figure who's come to a realization about the situation that both the Biden and Trump administrations, with bipartisan support from Congress, have helped to bring about in Gaza.
"Seems mostly like all the recent photos of starving children are responsible for this shift, though humanitarian aid groups have been warning about this for months and months," said Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein.
One observer said Clinton and a number of European leaders are speaking out now because Israel has already "carried out their final solution."
As Common Dreams reported this week, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has said that 85% of people in Gaza are now in Phase 5 of famine, defined at "an extreme deprivation of food."
New York Times columnist Megan Stack said she welcomed anyone who is "[waking] up" to the reality of man-made mass starvation made possible by U.S. support, but called it "an absolute indictment of the center-left, such as it is, that it took pictures of dying, skeletal babies with trash bags for diapers to muster this pale response."
"Subtext: We can stomach mass bombings, but starvation is a bridge too far," said Stack.
The comments from Clinton coincided with a shift in the corporate media's coverage of Gaza, with major outlets focusing heavily on the impact of starvation.
Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg said that instead of simply doing "reputational damage control by speaking up in these very last moments," powerful political leaders must "shut shit down."
"You want history books to not record you as an evil genocide supporter?" said Regunberg. "One speech now—after countless speeches condemning those who have been speaking out—ain't gonna cut it... You need to go to Gaza. You need to actually make an impact, NOW."
Progressive organizer Lindsey Boylan wondered whether establishment leaders "will ever admit that smearing all protests to stop the genocide actually contributed to the genocide."
"Few people could have played a more pivotal role in shaping the democratic response to prevent genocide," said Boylan of Clinton's comments. "Now here we are. Watching mass death of kids."
On Friday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has consistently demanded that the Biden and Trump administrations stop funding Israel's assault on Gaza and warned of the impact mass starvation would have, issued his latest call for U.S. support to end immediately.
"American taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb civilians, and support the cruelty of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his criminal ministers," said Sanders. "Enough is enough. The White House and Congress must immediately act to end this war using the full scope of American influence. No more military aid to the Netanyahu government. History will condemn those who fail to act in the face of this horror."