Donald Trump wore a big white bandage on the ear that took an assassin’s bullet just 48 hours earlier as he entered the arena in Milwaukee on the first night of the RNC convention.
As he pointed to his injury the crowd roared: “USA, USA, USA.”
When he pumped his fist, the echoes of his tragically foreshortened rally Saturday in Butler, PA, sent goosebumps through the party faithful.
They erupted into his new iconic warcry “Fight, fight, fight,” as he took his seat in the VIP box alongside his new VP pick J.D. Vance.
Eight years ago, when Vance wrote the hit 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy documenting his hardscrabble life growing up in Rustbelt USA, he was seen as the key to understanding Trump’s appeal to a new working class base. A rabid Never-Trumper at the time, his remarkable road to Damascus conversion to MAGA hero, is the theme Trump is embracing this week.
The first night’s speakers embodied the invitation Trump is extending to prodigal sons and daughters across the country to join him in the new America First Republican Party he has forged. Democrats, independents, Never-Trumpers, all are welcome into his big hopeful tent.
With the former president watching on, Amber Rose, a former Trump-deranged Only Fan model took the stage and declared her new love for him.
“I believed the left wing propaganda that Donald Trump was racist. But after she “looked into all things Donald Trump” she said she realized “These are my people, this is where I belong… and I put the red hat on too.”
If it hadn’t been past Joe Biden’s bedtime, the night would have had the self-described “most pro-union president” gnashing his teeth.
In a stunning rebuke to President Biden, Sean O’Brien, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, gave the keynote address on behalf of his 1.3 million members.
“Something is wrong with this country and we need to say it out loud,” he said imploring his “ friends on the Democratic side to embrace collaboration… Working people know our system is broken… There is a political caste system… Inflation is hurting working Americans.
“This has got to change.”
He didn’t quite endorse Trump but his mere presence was an ominous message to the Democrats.
Another unionist and lifelong Democrat who took to the stage before Trump’s arrival was not as shy.
Robert “Bobby” Bartels, Jr., Business Manager, Steamfitters Local 638A, announced he was voting for Trump in November.
“Now more than ever, we need a president who knows how to get things done.”
He cited the open border that allows “illegal immigrants to take American jobs and lower our wages [and] violent crime pushing people out of our cities while Democrats do nothing…
“That’s why this union Democrat, along with many of my union members, will be voting Trump this November, so we can take back the country and build back the middle class.”
Who knows whether Trump’s open door approach will lure enough Democrats and undecideds in November to give him the landslide election he craves, but he’s giving it a red hot go.
The crowd responded by chanting “We Love Trump.”