“A photo like that, it’s worth more than 100 million in campaign ads.”
So said Brett. Brett was a good-natured oil and gas lobbyist from Colorado, and I was sitting next to him on our flight from Denver to Milwaukee, en route to the 2024 Republican National Convention, the day after Thomas Matthew Crooks took his fateful shots.
Brett pulled out his phone. “I never thought I’d get an email that says ‘In light of the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump…’” he muttered.
Just two days earlier, a Mormon prepper in northwest Montana had told me he thought — well, he and Tucker Carlson thought — that not just Trump, but Trump and Biden would both be assassinated in the near future, plunging the US into chaos and giving the deep state (or similar) the pretext to take over the country. At the time I just nodded, feigning credulity. Twenty-four hours later, the world lurched on its axis, again.
And yet, the show rolls on, albeit with heightened security. Day one on the ground of the Republican National Convention and the crowd can be divided into two groups: those walking around trying to make eye contact with everyone (journalists, lobbyists, tourists), and those walking around discreetly avoiding eye contact with everyone (politicians, important journalists, police).
As I power-walked towards the Hyatt Regency Hotel to get my press credentials, the first sign that something unusual was afoot was the police boats cruising sharklike up and down the Milwaukee River. Then the two-and-a-half-metre fences, flanked by clusters of police officers and army personnel, in varying coloured uniforms — black, blue, khaki, plainclothes.
When I tried asking some of the guys wearing flak jackets with “SECRET SERVICE” on them about how Saturday’s assassination attempt has affected their work detail, they weren’t forthcoming. Finally I found a bored young traffic officer from Fresno who told me that there were 2,500 police and security services in town, from 23 different agencies: city, county, state and federal. There were also hundreds of private security contractors scattered around, usually with wraparound sunglasses and/or square and manly beards, working for high-profile news crews, for politicians.
Many of the locals hate that the RNC is being held here; Milwaukee is a working-class, racially diverse and fiercely progressive city. But Wisconsin is a crucial swing state, and the outer suburbs of the “horrible city” (Trump’s phrase) are turning Republican.
I met a couple of “unapologetic Christian conservatives” — Andrea, married to Brad, was carrying a sign that read “unapologetic Christian conservative” — who had recently moved out of Milwaukee to a village-slash-exurb called Hartland, about 40 kilometres away. They were sick of the crime (apparently there had been multiple murders in their neighbourhood) and the racism (Andrea is of mixed heritage, but isn’t “black enough” for the people she works with downtown). They were also wearing, and selling, T-shirts with pictures of a bloody-faced Trump pumping his fist in the air.
The pair designed the T-shirts themselves, at home, and had them printed within 24 hours of the attempted assassination. Their T-shirt business was a new venture, a side hustle, in part to finance their increased living costs now they had to commute to Milwaukee for work.
Andrea and Brad told me that God had intervened to stop the bullet from hitting Trump. I heard this numerous times throughout the day. Meanwhile, at a broadly left-wing protest in Red Arrow Park, a couple of blocks from the convention centre, someone told me that the shooting was staged, a fake; that Donald Trump had dropped to the ground, then he (or one of his cronies) splashed fake blood on his face. Someone else suggested that in a real active shooter situation, there was no way the Secret Service would allow Trump to put his head back up like he did, nor to stand onstage for so long.
Americans with differing political views are living next to each other, but they exist in completely different universes. Their worlds might overlap in certain places, but their worldviews are fundamentally unrecognisable to each other, and increasingly so. This is a cliché, but it’s also my first time experiencing the cliché for myself, on the ground, and it’s wild.
At the rally at Red Arrow Park, anti-abortion activists (counter-protesters) blasted homophobic commentary through their loudhailers (there was repeated mention of “golden showers”, “fisting” and “gerbils”), while a sassy counter-counter-protester drowned them out with amplified cries of “foetus stealer!” and “small dick energy!”.
The Democrats and socialists I spoke to are depressed, whereas one Texan Trump supporter told me he was so excited that he couldn’t sleep at night (then his wife giggled). Trump’s reelection seems inevitable. But at the same time, I’m in a gigantic MAGA-sized bubble, so who knows.
In the afternoon, I got chatting to Phyllis Kelley, the wife of Keith Kelley, a senator from Alabama. “It’s just horrible,” she said of Saturday’s shooting. “I can’t imagine anybody being that extreme. You know, people should be able to agree to disagree, about almost anything, but without resorting to violence.”
“Lucky he was a bad shot,” I said.
Phyllis laughed uneasily. “I think that was a lot of a God thing,” she replied.
“A divine intervention?”
“Uh-huh… Trump is going to be the only thing that saves America right now.”
I pressed Phyllis on the matter of Trump’s… character.
“He is not a perfect person,” she admitted. “But neither is Joe Biden.”
“But he didn’t have sex with a porn star?”
“That we know of…”
“So, would you be happy with some other politician with less bad behaviour? Or, do you think Trump has some special power?” I ask.
“I don’t think Trump has a special power!” Phyliss said. “But I do think he strikes a chord with a lot of people, regardless of his personal failures. Sometimes he might go a bit far in what he says. But I can deal with hurt feelings, if I’ve got money in my pocket.”
More tomorrow.
