THE THEME OF the first day of the Republican National Convention was to “Make America Wealthy Again,” to be followed immediately by days in which America would again be made Safe, Strong and Great. But as I roved the convention and its periphery, it seemed as if today was all about strength.
The tee-shirt vendors on Merch Row were selling shirts with a dozen slogans to choose among.
One depicted the American Eagle holding a rifle and what appeared to be an assault weapon — not an olive branch of peace — in its talons. The slogan was “In God We Trust — Guns Are Just For Backup.”
Another, too wordy in my opinion, said “If You Don’t Like Trump Then You Probably Won’t Like Me … And I Am OK With That.”
A third had a drawing of Donald Trump wearing red, white, and blue sunglasses and sporting a smirk. It said tersely, “I’ll Be Back.”
But most of the tee-shirts explicitly exalted the idea of strength — not only the sort of strength that warriors have, but also the special strength of not giving a damn about what other people think.
I visit the Heritage Foundation’s all-day Policy Fest. Heritage has gotten a lot of ink for its Project 2025 which it describes as “the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025.”
A key part of the ambitious project is a thousand page “Playbook” that will allow a new Republican administration to hit the ground running. The introduction explains, “we are forming agency teams and drafting transition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of “so help me God.”
Among the goals are to dismantle the “deep state” by, among other things, replacing thousands of government workers with those loyal to the new president, cutting back the power of independent agencies, and making the government directly responsible to the president. Trump has recently tried to distance himself from the playbook, particularly its proposed national ban on abortion.
When I arrived, two former Trump administration officials, Mark Morgan and Thomas Homan, were in a panel discussion moderated by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah).
Morgan was formerly Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration and now a “Visiting Fellow” at Heritage. Homan was Acting Director of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE during Trump’s presidency and like Morgan a Visiting Fellow at Heritage.
Morgan and Homan were spitting mad at Biden’s handling of immigration and border security. “Our president intentionally unsecured the border,” according to Homan. The consequence was he let terrorists, rapists, fentanyl and sex trafficking “pour” into the country. According to Homan, the Biden administration looks at laws as “advisory opinions,” not something that must be complied with.
Homan was ecstatic about the possible return of Trump to the White House. “He was one badass president and I can’t wait for him to get back.” He mocked Kamala Harris’s work on border issues. He said, “I’ll show her how to be a border czar.” And on deportation he was equally hyperbolic: “You ain’t seen anything yet. We will have a historic deportation operation.”
Morgan was if anything even angrier than Homan, though he saved much of his venom for “liberal media” who never tell the public the truth about the situation at the border. He talked about a 100,000 “missing children” and recounted stories about the widespread rapes and sex trafficking suffered by people travelling to the United States for illegal entry.
Morgan also looked forward to a return of Trump. He called on the audience to remember “that ironic picture that is going down in history. Trump was shot in the head and he rises from the ground to show his fist and say ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’”
Morgan paused and shook his head at the very thought of the majesty of the moment, “That’s the strength we need from the president of the United States.”
Erik Prince, a former Navy seal and the founder of the private military company Blackwater, is today an entrepreneur and an investor. He gave a short speech in which he called out the “bloated and incompetent” national security that could not even protect Trump from a 20-year-old with a gun. He reminded the audience that World War I began because of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
Prince warned that the Russian Army was better than it had ever been. He then sounded an entrepreneurial note. He said he wanted to see a break up of the arrangements that let big businesses supply the military, so that smaller and more innovative manufacturers could get their feet in the door. While he didn’t say as much, the implication was that he could do a better job.
Looking for some action
I left the Policy Fest and walked back to the convention proper. The day had dawned hot and by the time I walked a few blocks in the sun I had sweated through my shirt. I saw an older man sitting on the edge of a planter in the shade. He was inside the vehicle perimeter, but not inside the pedestrian perimeter for which credentials were required. He had no credentials. He was wryly smiling as he surveyed the mostly empty streets.
I struck up a conversation. Turns out he was a 71-year-old retired lawyer from Northbrook, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. His name was Lee Goodman. I asked why he was at the convention. He said, “I’m what some people call the progressive activists. And I wanted to come and see what was going on here, both the protest and the counter protests and get a sense of the mood, the whole thing.”
“It’s very creepy. There’s fences up everywhere. The downtown is behind a security perimeter, and the people who belong get in everywhere. And the rest of us don’t get in anywhere.” Lee Goodman, convention observer
He hadn’t found the protesters yet.
I asked about his observations so far. He said, “It’s very creepy. There’s fences up everywhere. The downtown is behind a security perimeter, and the people who belong get in everywhere. And the rest of us don’t get in anywhere.”
I told him about the discussion on immigration at the Policy Fest. He said that he has been to the border several times. He said he went there to “witness” what was happening. “We’re just trying to bring back word of what’s really going on and show people down there that someone outside of the area cares.”
He did not agree with Morgan and Homan. In his view, “There’s no reason why anyone wants to come to this country shouldn’t be allowed to come to this country. It’s the laws that are the problem. There’s no reason to keep people out.”
In official business, the convention did a roll call of the delegations and nominated Donald J. Trump to be the party’s candidate for the presidency. In mid-afternoon Trump announced that he had selected JD Vance, the Senator from Ohio, as his Vice President. Vance rose to prominence after his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a best seller and later a movie.
Vance was a Yale Law graduate and back in the day a “Never Trumper,” but times change and he accepted the nomination with good cheer and a grateful acceptance speech.
Presidential path paved with poetry
I took a stroll through the vendor section and came upon a sign that said “Donald Trump for Poet Laureate.” I did a double take and saw that at the table where the sign was located there were a pair of energetic entrepreneurs who were selling a volume called “Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump.”
I bought a copy of the 385-page collection after my vendors pointed out the quality binding and the yellow ribbon that can be used so you do not lose your place. On the page where there might be a dedication there was a drawing of Trump’s profile and the epigraph, “I know words. I have the best words.”
The book is published by a “Golden Goose Publishing Co.” of Portland, Oregon. A publisher’s note at the beginning makes an extravagant claim, “combining the measured contentiousness of Thoreau, the terse poignancy of Hemingway, and the incisive social commentary of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Toni Morrison, Donald J. Trump has emerged as one of the leading poets of his generation.”
The young man asks if I am familiar with E.E. Cummings and the idea of “concrete poems.” When my nod is tentative, he explains that concrete poetry is poetry that arranges the written words of the poem into a shape on the page that is sometimes suggestive of what is being written about.
Turns out that to produce the collected poems of Trump, these entrepreneurs have taken Trump’s tweets over the years from 2009 to 2019 and arranged them into shapes that remind one of Cummings’ poetry.
On examination, the concreteness of the poetry is not always turned into a recognizable shape, but the editors have an undeniable talent to use spacing and shaping to turn tweets into something that is vaguely poetic. A “portrait” of Jeb Bush:
One of the entrepreneurs tells me that they have sold 1,200 copies so far. That seems a decent start but it’s a bit of a niche project. I wonder where they expect to go from here.
I answer my own question when I notice the title page says that this collection is “Volume I.”
Of course, they expect another volume is coming.
Bay City News staff writer Joe Dworetzky is in Milwaukee to report on the daily drama and curiosities he will encounter at the Republican National Convention.