Trump’s RNC Feels Like a Victory Party. Some Fear He May ‘Blow’ It

MILWAUKEE — This week’s Republican National Convention has the air not so much of a nominating celebration, but of a jubilant Trump 2024 victory party. 

After her convention speech on Tuesday night, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump made a late night appearance at the Lone Star Social, a glitzy afterparty for the Texas delegation, held in an ornate, columned hall called the Grain Exchange, where waitstaff served glasses of champagne and platters of deviled quail eggs.

The nominee’s daughter-in-law highlighted RNC plans for turning out the vote, and insisted to those in attendance that they would get to rest easy on election night. “We are going to go to bed early on November 5, as Donald J Trump will be announced as our 47th president. Early,” she emphasized. “I’m calling it at 10 o’clock at night. How does that sound to everybody?”

In practically every corner of the convention site in downtown Milwaukee, the Trump faithful have all but declared this presidential election over. In the wake of the failed assassination attempt on the former president — and amid a flood of bad poll numbers for Democrats and party infighting — buoyant optimism about Trump’s odds in November is the norm. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Rolling Stone: “You should never feel like something’s ‘in the bag,’ but I think he’s got a very good chance of winning.” Trump ally and former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson smiled ear to ear when asked about Trump’s chances: “Oh, man! I think it’s looking super good,” he told Rolling Stone. “I mean, we got all the momentum right now.”

Indeed, there is seldom a seasoned Republican operative, GOP lawmaker, conservative luminary, delegate, or close Trump associate who’s in Milwaukee this week who Rolling Stone has bumped into who isn’t convinced that a Trump restoration, or electoral landslide, even, is now a foregone conclusion.

The party appears thoroughly convinced that their openly authoritarian leader is on track to easily reconquer power, but just beneath the surface is a nagging worry that the football is being spiked too soon. There are still 3.5 months before Election Day, an eternity in American politics. A small number of the national Republican Party elite and megadonor class present in this city have privately conceded to Rolling Stone that Trump’s nemesis and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — of all people — is an instructive, chilling example for them. She left an exuberant nominating convention in the summer, as the other party appeared to be largely demoralized and unraveling across the aisle, and enjoyed a glut of encouraging poll numbers and legions of followers awaiting her cake-walk win.

Then, she blew it.

“Are we gonna blow this? Anything’s possible,” one GOP donor who’s met recently with the ex-president said, with a barely concealed sigh, on Wednesday ahead of the night’s round of mainstage speeches.

If Trump manages to blow it now, he’s not just risking a loss for his policies and his party. He’s risking actual prison sentences, a reality he is keenly aware of and hopes to use another presidential term to forestall.

Still, it is hard to remember a time in national politics when the pendulum has swung so quickly in the direction of one candidate. First, Biden delivered the world’s worst debate performance — leading to weeks of intra-party turmoil about whether he should continue to be the Democratic standard bearer. Then Trump survived an assassin’s bullet, before raising his hand in a defiant fist pump — photos of which are destined for children’s school books. And as Trump put on a mega MAGA spectacle in Milwaukee, Joe Biden was diagnosed with Covid. 

If the election were held today, Trump would likely win. Full stop. But elections are not sprints. They are long races, and the dynamics can shift. At this point, it is not clear if Biden will even be the Democratic nominee next week, much less by the time of the party’s Chicago convention in August. And for all of the horrid news for Biden, the polling in this race remains well in the range of the recoverable. Recall that at one point, Michael Dukakis looked like he was a post-Reagan world beater, in an invincible position against George H.W. Bush.

In fact, much of the dynamic right now recalls the dynamics of the 2016 campaign — when Clinton was in high gear and Republicans appeared to be in deep disarray, with many GOP grandees resigning themselves to losing in a landslide with a candidate named Donald Trump. Hubris on the Democratic side was so high that, during the general election, Clinton infamously never set foot here in Wisconsin, where she lost in a shocking upset.

Some of the Republican overconfidence in this moment can be attributed to faith. Speaker after speaker at the convention, both on the main stage, and at satellite events, are talking up the divine gift of Trump’s survival. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s convention speech epitomized this line of religious reasoning. “On Saturday the devil came to Pennsylvania with a rifle,” Scott said. “But an American lion got back on his feet.” Scott continued: “If you didn’t believe in miracles before Saturday you better be believing now,” adding, “our God still saved. He still delivered.” 

Though the Lord may move in mysterious ways, the obvious shared understanding is that a higher power spared Trump because He wants him back in the White House. As Lara Trump put it at the convention afterparty: “God is not finished with Donald J. Trump.”

Of the many speakers at the convention, Trump ally and former New York congressman Lee Zeldin stood out a rare voice sounding an alarm against complacency. “You have to fight for it — the mechanics of campaigning, the tactics of campaigning,” he said, speaking at a side event hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank. 

For Zeldin, that included encouraging Republicans to embrace early voting, or risk entering Election Day having “already lost many states across this country.” Zeldin exhorted GOP activists against getting outworked by Democrats. “We need to be everywhere, taking nothing for granted — all in, every ounce of our energy, every moment of our day!” he said. “We cannot wake up the day after the election, having come up short in this important cause to save America.”

Elsewhere in Milwaukee, some light groundwork for excuse-making, should Trump fail, was already being laid. 

Hours after Trump’s vice-presidential pick Sen. J.D. Vance spoke onstage on Wednesday, close Trump ally and RNC committeeman David Bossie sat at the lobby area bar of a luxury hotel near the convention’s arena, eating a midnight dinner. Around him were former senior Trump administration officials and other MAGA stalwarts, partying late into the night. 

When asked by Rolling Stone if it was unwise for Republicans to declare victory this early, Bossie replied: “I think the fake-news media is going to create a narrative now that Donald Trump is guaranteed to win, to try to suppress and drive down our vote.”