It’s still Donald Trump’s party — and don’t you doubt it.
On the second night of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas — an event ostensibly meant to boost the GOP candidates on the ballot in November — the party fully embraced its status as a cult of devotion to a single man: the president.
In a video played on the screens throughout the American Airlines Center, a voice declared that “on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump.”
The video opened by zooming into planet Earth, landing on a childhood photo of the president.
God needed someone to “fight the marxists” the video narrated. “I need someone with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild,” the voice of God intoned.
There is no record of Trump birthing one of his grandchildren, but Dear Leader bringing life into the world in the image of the God that chose him paints a picture one could worship.
Attendees were thrilled. At one point, CBS’ Ed O’Keefe asked a member of the crowd if Vice President JD Vance was their pick for the 2028 nomination.
“My guy is who Donald Trump endorses,” the woman replied.
“So it’s up to [Trump] to tell you?” O’Keefe pressed.
“That’s exactly right,” she said. “I’ll do my own research, [but] if he told me to back or support a liberal leftist I’d have to think twice.”
“I’m very loyal,” she added. “People call us groupies — a cult! I don’t care.”
Trump himself soaked up the praise. Upon closing his speech on Thursday, the president had the crowd raise their hands and recite a pledge — not to the nation, but to himself.
“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States — that loves us so much he can’t even breathe,” he recited in a call and response with the crowd.
“That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way — I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do,” he rambled (without the expectation that the crowd would keep up anymore). “And we are going to vote.”
“You know what happens if you don’t vote?” Trump asked. “You go to hell.”
The candidates in competitive races that these attendees would actually be voting for were relegated to secondary — or even tertiary —- figures behind the president and his Cabinet. The event was effectively a two-day Trump rally, one in which the president could bathe in the raucous adoration of his most devoted fans.
Yet there are still races to be run. Control of both chambers of Congress hangs in the balance, and while candidates are caught in a tug-of-war between the party requirement to pay tribute to the president — and independent voters growing discomfort with the MAGA movement — Trump’s cult is likely to end in a predictable, self-destructive spiral.
