Kim Il-sung of North Korea reportedly sought transfusions of blood from young men; Mao Zedong of China believed sex with young women could prolong his life; Muammar Gaddafi underwent fat injections and hair transplantation to make himself look younger. But for Donald Trump, the secret of eternal youth lies in nights like this.
The occasion of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas was enough to get the 80-year-old US president’s juices flowing. An arena with thousands of fanatical supporters indulging his lies, laughing at his jokes and burnishing his fantasies of greatness is Trump’s happy place.
It certainly beats stuffy Washington. “State of the Union, you have to be very staid,” he said, feigning stiffness and a dreary voice: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s an honour to be your president.” The crowd laughed. Trump continued: “You do that for about an hour and then everybody’s falling asleep. This is a much harder routine, let me tell you. We’re also out here to have a little bit of fun.” The crowd roared.
Trump’s second term has been a quest in self-mythology. It is there in the dramatic foreign policy aimed at reshaping the world. It is there in the monuments and renovations in the capital, Washington DC. It is there in the barrage of social media posts and AI slop in which Trump appears as a young and virile all-conquering hero.
It was also there on Wednesday night as Trump milked the adulation of his fanbase, the Make America Great Again diehards who, in some cases, have followed him for more than a decade. He was visibly gratified to see the “front row Joes” from his rallies, including Blake Marnell, who wears a brick-patterned suit resembling his brick wall.
The president spoke for an hour and 44 minutes, surpassing his own record length convention speech set in Milwaukee two years ago. He never stopped to sip water, though the adrenaline shot of this crowd, as devoted as his aide Natalie Harp, likely could have kept him going much longer.
Anyone who suspected that this unconventional convention would be a “Trump-a-palooza” had the view reinforced when Lee Greenwood sang (somewhat shakily) “God Bless the USA”, the familiar intro to Trump campaign rallies.
A giant video screen with the US flag slowly rose to reveal dozens of mainly female Trump fans, waving little flags and smiling exuberantly. Trump, wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt and blue tie, walked slowly across the shiny black stage, trimmed with gold. Chants of “USA! USA!” erupted as the song finished.
“Welcome to the first ever midterm convention of any party,” Trump said, conveniently ignoring three that the Democrats held in the 1970s and 1980s.
He soon told another lie. “Not only is this packed, but you have an equal number of people standing outside. If anybody would like to give up their seat!” In fact there were dozens of empty seats in the stadium, with the “nosebleeds” in the upper tier mostly unfilled.
Making the dubious boast that no one had left the arena after 80 minutes, the president said: “It’s a great tribute to Trump … Everybody loves me and I love everybody!”
But the most grievous lie came when he falsely claimed to have won three presidential elections, and declared, also falsely, that “people on the other side are actually admitting it”. The crowd cheered and shouted: “Four more years!”
This was political theatre of the absurd with many bizarre Trumpian riffs, ranging from bad sporting trades involving the Dallas Mavericks and Babe Ruth to how Trump had to sacrifice hygiene for his political career so he could shake hands (“I’m a very clean person”).
In trying to champion Texas attorney general Ken Paxton for the US Senate, he said: “He may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly and he may not be the best looking guy I’ve ever seen but you know what he is? He’s the greatest attorney general in America and he deserves to be your next senator. I’m sorry, Ken. Where the hell is he? He’ll never speak to me again but that’s OK.”
There were language games. He spoke as if his big idea of changing “Democrats” to “Dumocrats” was a piece of marketing genius or political artistry worthy of Lee Atwater. (“Nobody knows that dumb has a B at the end of it – most people think it’s ‘D-U-M’”.)
Most reasonable people would look at him and think this poor elderly person is in need of an intervention. But this audience, of course, lapped it up and encouraged him.
So he revelled in his name changes. He mentioned the “Gulf of America” and earned cheers and chants of “USA! USA!” He said, “Lake Ontario, you know we’re going to call that Lake America” – more cheers.
“We did come up with one the other day which we think is appropriate. You have a neighbouring state, New Mexico. We think it should be called ‘New America.’”
Turning to the Iran war and strait of Hormuz, he said: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll have an announcement, we’ll call it the ‘Trump Strait’ and I’m sure the Iranian leadership will be thrilled with that.”
Speaking of Iran, the war would be seen as a liability by any normal president in an election year and it is a subject many Republicans would rather avoid. But Trump, true to form, bulldozed straight ahead.
He also advised Iran “not to get cute” and asked the crowd: “Does anybody here think that Iran should have a nuclear weapon?” There was a huge shout of, “No!”
Trump even speculated what would have happened if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon and subjugated the US. “If they had a nuclear weapon, I’d be calling the Supreme Leader and I’d be saying, ‘Mr Supreme Leader, how are you, sir? Is there anything we can do for you?’ – as opposed to bombing the crap out of him.”
Somewhere in all this mess, Trump talked about the midterms. He asked voters to “pretend” that he is on the ballot and promised $5,000 to every adult US citizen if Republicans retain control of both the House and Senate. It was the old Trumpian trick: flaunt your bribery in public so blatantly that enough people assume it can’t be corrupt.
He railed against Democratic “communists” and declared: “They have more bullshit than any human beings on the planet.” His supporters went wild. Such a witty putdown, sir!
Trump castigated James Talarico, the Democrats’ candidate for the Senate in Texas, as “Talafreako” and claimed: “He ran a campaign to ‘beat meat.’ He called it ‘beat meat.’ I don’t know what the hell he meant by that … he wants to ‘beat meat?” … I’m getting myself in trouble. He was recently seen having a barbecue and eating a lot of meat.”
All this and so much more. It went on and on, looping back on itself, zigzagging across the map, bamboozling any outside observer but somehow here, in the arena of Maga, making a warped kind of sense.
“I love the weave,” Trump mused, gesticulating wildly. “You know what the weave is? You talk about something, then you bring in a ballroom, or you bring in an aeroplane, or you bring in Air Force One – but you notice I always get right back to the same topic. Some day there’ll be a time when I do the weave, weave, weave; some day there’ll be a time when I don’t get back to the original subject.”
Pointing his finger in the air, Trump said: “And then you can say: he’s had it.”
