Along with death and taxes, invitations to celebrations you’d rather avoid are included on the list of adult life’s sad inevitabilities. Everyone has sucked it up to go to the wedding of a couple they disapprove of, or a family dinner that will inevitably turn into an argument. Still, most of us aren’t expected to shell out thousands to go to a get-together we know we’ll hate. But when Donald Trump demands ritual worship from Republican politicians, he can’t help but try to squeeze them for every humiliating drop.
This week, only days after Labor Day weekend, he is expecting hundreds of candidates to show up for two days at the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas — and to pay $25,000 a pop, at minimum — for the privilege of being seen to prostrate themselves before him inside the American Airlines Center.
In the past, most Republicans would have complied, ponying up both the money and time to placate the narcissist-in-chief, even though midterm conventions have never been a thing for the GOP and likely won’t be after Trump is gone. This year, though, a whole lot of candidates have discovered a sudden need to wash their hair. POLITICO reached out to 70 Republican leaders and found that 45 had already decided not to go; most of the rest haven’t decided. According to The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone, many Republicans on Capitol Hill are also reluctant to attend — a sign, he writes, that they are afraid of being seen with an unpopular president who is “dragging them down in this fall’s midterm elections.”
This is bad news for Trump, because the only real reason this convention is happening is to boost his fragile ego. It’s apparently not enough to have a full-time aide, a svelte blonde by the name of Natalie Harp, to follow him around night and day for the sole purpose of offering praise. Nor is he satisfied with regularly televised Oval Office events, where he surrounds himself with administration officials singing hosannas to his greatness. The U.S. Mint breaking the law to put his face on a fake gold coin, the Supreme Court blessing his equally illegal White House ballroom project, the IndyCar race through the streets of Washington, the UFC fight on the White House lawn, the attempts to build an arch in Trump’s name — there is seemingly no end to the efforts at assuaging the president’s gnawing fears of his own inadequacy. Ultimately, it’s a lost cause, because his fears are justified.
Over Labor Day weekend, Trump spent hours every day posting A.I.-generated delusions of grandeur on Truth Social: images of him with George Washington, a video depicting him as DC superhero Green Lantern, illustrations featuring him as the evil leader of a robot army and a rendering of an outsized map showing America conquering Mexico, Canada and Greenland to create a Trumpian empire. It’s hard to imagine who all this is for, except for himself. The 80-year-old president doesn’t seem to be able to cope with reality, and so he is instead burrowing himself into childish power fantasies as an escape.
Perhaps they hope to buy enough peace to last for a few days, maybe even weeks, to focus on the upcoming midterm elections. Either way, it’s a very expensive and public equivalent of giving a pacifier to an infant.
In light of all this, it’s obvious what the Republican National Committee, which is nicknaming the convention “Trumpapalooza,” hopes to achieve: enough ego gratification for Trump to calm him. Perhaps they hope to buy enough peace to last for a few days, maybe even weeks, to focus on the upcoming midterm elections. Either way, it’s a very expensive and public equivalent of giving a pacifier to an infant.
But the gambit will likely backfire. Ratings, a metric that Trump fixates on endlessly, are almost assuredly going to be low. For one thing, the RNC foolishly scheduled the convention for Wednesday and Thursday night, meaning it will compete against the NFL season’s opening games. Television networks don’t seem interested in airing it. While Trump is booked for two nights as a headline speaker, he is not the orator he once was. Now known for giving ever-longer and more repetitive stemwinders, he will cap a series of uninspiring speaker choices. On top of this, the president’s approval ratings are at record lows, especially with Republicans. Taken together, it’s hard to imagine the event will draw much beyond a paltry audience.
On the other hand, Trump has often managed to scare up surprising numbers of supporters, so it’s possible he will defy expectations again. But beyond the polls, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday another measure of his growing unpopularity: MAGA retail shops and their suppliers “are seeing sales dwindle.” Those that can’t pivot to more popular merchandising themes are shutting down. One retailer explained that “sales for Trump apparel began falling after Trump’s re-election but took a nosedive roughly six months ago,” just after the Iran war began.
It’s unclear if Trump is aware that most Americans loathe him, and that even his fans are starting to slink away. The president has long been a fan of cable news, but there are growing indications that he is increasingly shielding himself from legitimate sources of information, much less accurate polls. As Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times told MS NOW, Trump lives inside an “information bubble” where he only “hears what he wants to hear.” Much of that information is provided by Harp, who keeps him soothed with printouts from right-wing websites that often publish false headlines.
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Presidential candidates typically don’t spend much time in the arena at conventions. Their time is too precious, and they seek to build excitement for their acceptance speech on the final night. Trump, of course, defied this tradition at the 2024 Republican National Convention, when he attended every night of the proceedings in Milwaukee, sitting like a king receiving homage. He seemed unwilling or unable to pass up the chance to listen to the endless, empty flattery coming from the stage, along with the cheers of thousands of rambunctious supporters. This midterm convention seems to be a feeble attempt to recreate that feeling for him.
The problem, of course, is getting people to show up. There won’t be delegates to fill seats in the massive arena, and Republican leaders keep finding they have unbreakable plans already scheduled that night. In a last-minute bid to make sure there are warm human bodies to feed Trump the applause he craves, the RNC started giving away tickets last week. “FREE TICKETS,” screamed a text message sent out to people on a RNC donor list. Some expressed concerns it was a scam, but organizers confirmed the giveaway was genuine.
But being Texas, a largely conservative state, organizers will likely be able to wrangle enough bodies that they won’t be forced to resort to paying people to show up. Still, the need to hustle for seat-fillers is another reminder of how pointless the pageant is in the first place, and how its sole purpose is to give Trump yet one more way to hide his own unpopularity from himself.
There’s no mystery as to why the president’s staff and Republican leadership strive to maintain his delusion that people like him. Famously petulant and vengeful, Trump would not hesitate to destroy the career of any official who told him the truth. This is why Republicans who aren’t attending the convention are offering lame excuses to reporters rather than admitting they simply don’t want to be in Dallas.
Keeping Trump placated will become an even more difficult task if, as expected, Democrats win control of the House and perhaps the Senate, despite the GOP’s best efforts at congressional gerrymandering and voter suppression. Sure, Natalie Harp will always be on hand with a constant stream of printouts blaming other Republicans for the loss and reassuring Trump that he is nation’s most beloved man. She and the president also have access to A.I., which they can ask to generate endless images of him as a warrior, god, rock star or other powerful character.
But make-believe can only get one so far when the real world keeps intruding. Maintaining Trump’s bubble of flattery already looks like an exhausting task for his handlers. Their misery is only going to get worse.
