When bullets whizzed dangerously close to Donald Trump’s head last Saturday, Vince Fusca was there, among the audience watching the former president’s speech from the stands behind him. On Monday, the day Trump made a triumphant comeback at the Republican Convention with his left ear bandaged after the attack, Fusca was walking around with his unmistakable short-brimmed hat among the exhibitors at the event, which runs until Thursday in Milwaukee.
“When I saw him from behind fall to the ground the way he did, I said to myself: ‘That’s it, they killed him,’” he explained to Morning Express, while a couple of supporters of the Republican candidate waited to have their photo taken with him. They too had recognised him from watching the video of the attempted assassination, footage that has been reproduced in recent days something like a billion times in every corner of the planet.
Fusca was at a loss to answer the question of how he and those around him were able to remain calm in those moments, although he said he was “ready to spring into action to neutralize the shooter,” a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks whose motivations remain a mystery to investigators. His plans, he added, were to travel directly to Milwaukee from the site of the rally, a farm in Butler, Pennsylvania, near where he lives, but he changed his mind: it was better to spend Sunday at home, “come to terms with the trauma,” and drive the next day. “There was no way I could miss this; I am a convinced Trump supporter from the beginning,” said Fusca, who gained some notoriety in 2022 as a failed candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania.
The assassination attempt that has turned the US election campaign upside down less than four months before the polls has not only prolonged Fusca’s 15 minutes of fame in the magaverse,a universe whose epicenter has moved for a few days to this Midwestern city, has also added interest to a convention that was announced to be predictable, almost boring. It has also served to make the acclamation of the leader, let’s call it “entrumpization”, The final proof that Trump has absolute control of the party came with the last-minute inclusion of Haley, his last standing enemy, as one of the speakers on Tuesday’s program. She gave a speech of unapologetic capitulation.
The delegates are the center of this party. They arrive from all 50 states and associated and overseas territories dressed in their finest clothes. The 161 members of the Texas delegation, for example, all wear cowboy hats. cowboy. On the rest of the heads, the red caps of Make America Great Again, the Trumpist slogan par excellence, dominate. The waste of all the variants of the merchandising The ex-president’s list is endless. And there are countless references to Lincoln, the founding myth of the party; hats with elephants, the mascot of conservatism in this country; women’s dresses with the American flag; costumes from the time of the War of Independence, lots of badges reminiscent of candidates from past elections and lots of blue suits, white shirts and red ties.
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The delegations are organised around poles with the names of their countries of origin on the floor of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball stadium where the competition is being held, which has been covered with carpet for the occasion. As with Eurovision, the matter has its own rules bordering on geopolitics. For example, if, as is the case, the candidate is from Florida, then its members have a prominent place, close to the stage, as do the representatives of the states that will be decisive in the election. Wherever they are, each one defends his own, as everywhere: you know, there is no place in the world that is more beautiful than the great state of South Dakota, nor is there a territory with a richer and more heroic history than that of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Ohio Pride
On Monday, Ohioans were filled with a sudden burst of pride. It was after it became known that Trump had chosen one of their own, Senator JD Vance, as his running mate on the ballot. Shortly after the announcement, and the officialization of the presidential candidacy, Linda Caudill, a Cincinnati resident — “like Vance,” she said proudly — predicted that the two will make “a great tandem.” “I know him well; he’s one of us. And they will both understand each other perfectly, there will be no friction,” she added, while volunteers handed out posters with the brand new slogan “Trump 2024” and a meme was making the rounds on cell phones in which the letters “v” and “a” crossed out the “p” and “e” of Pence, so that the old 2020 ballot that said Trump-Pence would say Trump-Vance, and the matter was settled.
Among the delegates, there are many men and women who, like Caudill, are over 60 years old. There are people with long involvement in politics, like Bill Huff, from Vermont, who was a candidate for party chairman in his county and had signed up “for the experience,” and others who made an effort in the primaries “to hear other proposals, before deciding on the former president,” like Bob (“no last names, please”), from Texas. Almost all of them could agree with the words of Ann Beauchamp, from South Carolina: “My support? It’s 110% for Trump.” And most of the dozen interviewed by this newspaper attributed the fact that the former president had been saved to “some kind of divine intervention.”
Perhaps the most deserving delegates are the nine from Guam. “A whole day on a plane” separates the Micronesian island from the big event in Milwaukee, explained their leader, Felix Camacho, who was governor of this remote US territory for eight years. This is their fourth convention, and that fact alone speaks to their Republican commitment. So much effort for (almost) nothing: the law does not allow citizens of Guam to vote in the presidential elections.
The badges hanging from the necks of the 50,000 attendees serve to place each one. There are the journalists, also known as “the enemy of the people” in Trumpist jargon. They are crowded at the tables in the back rows of the stands, except for those from the big media, who have their own television studio in front of the stage. Various party personalities pass through these spaces, from Kevin McCarthy, the very brief Speaker of the House of Representatives, to Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who on Monday in a hurried conversation showed himself convinced of victory in November: “I have never seen the party so united,” he explained.
There are the invited guests, the 5,000 volunteers and the alternate delegates, who come to the convention in case someone fails and on Monday were nervously waiting for a call like those football players who warm up on the sidelines not knowing for sure whether or not they will take the field. One of them, named Kevin Gormand, was something of a needle in the haystack of Trumpism in Milwaukee: “the only one sent by Arkansas to represent those who voted for Haley.”
The area reserved for the event by the city, a Democratic city that is resignedly living through the triumphant Republican caucus, includes dozens of closed streets, where the attendees wander around, lost, following the instructions of members of the secret service and police who have come from all over the country and are armed to the teeth. There are dozens of parallel events, promoted by organizations such as Serbians for Trump (!), screenings of the new film about Ronald Reagan, with John Voight and Dennis Quaid, and book signings by the most vociferous congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Around the stadium there is also everything to entertain the wait between chat and chat: stalls and more stalls selling merchandising, life-size silhouettes of Richard Nixon, a pub courtesy of CNN and Politicaland even a place where you can slam your phone company and sign up for Patriot Mobile. It’s the only one on the market, its advertising promises, “where you can be sure that the owners won’t invest in progressive causes.” woke”.
It is clear that in Donald Trump’s court, this is one of the worst possible betrayals.
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