Μake us preferred on Google DALLAS—“This place is packed,” President Trump said, looking out at a red-capped and rhinestoned crowd. “Not only is this packed, but you have an equal number of people standing outside.”
There were no lines outside of American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas on the sweltering first night of the Republican Party’s midterm convention. The arena’s upper deck was nearly empty. The middle tier, only slightly fuller. A frantic energy circulated in the foyers as staff ushered attendees onto the convention floor before the president took the stage.
This isn’t when party conventions typically happen. They’re generally held during presidential election years to officially nominate a candidate and conduct other party business. So the stated purpose of this unorthodox gathering depended on whom you asked. It was a fundraiser for the GOP. It was a way to drum up attention for its candidates. It was a content mill for their future social media clips.
President Trump shared a nearly two-hour keynote address.
ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
Several of the congressional candidates spoke to sparse crowds.
ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
For Trump, it was an opportunity to make the midterms about himself.
“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” he said. “I’m on the ballot. I’m on the ballot—just one more time.”
Is that what the candidates on the ballot want? Trump’s approval rating is low. Oil is more than $100 a barrel for the third time this year. Key factions of the GOP are steaming over the administration’s ongoing Middle East hostilities, stubborn inflation and protracted fallout from the handling of the Epstein files.
In the arena, though, Trump on the ballot was fine—excellent, actually. Because attendees weren’t there to see the congressional candidates, several of whom spoke to sparse crowds. Many hadn’t paid to be there, getting tickets from state parties or nonprofits or a public lottery. Some were looking to the future of the party—November, yes, and also 2028. But everyone wanted to watch another episode of the Trump show.
ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
American flags, cowboy hats and Trump merch were all over the arena. ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
The usual iconography of the Stars and Mavericks, Dallas’s respective NHL and NBA teams, had been replaced with photographs of the president. His face was on T-shirts, mouse pads and magnets inside a slapdash merchandise stand. One poster for sale ($20) showed a pixelated image of the president with the tagline: “He’s not fighting for himself, he’s fighting for you.”
Trump was also all over the dress that Barbara Tomasino had made—dozens of photographs of the president, package taped onto her shift and the tops of her slip-on sneakers. The Plano, Texas, resident had first seen Trump 11 years ago at the very same venue, wearing the same homemade dress. “I said to my husband, ‘We can’t go to a Trump rally without making a statement,’” she recalled. She’d gotten free tickets to this convention through the public lottery and was there early to make sure she got a seat near the stage.
Some items showed a disregard for term limits. ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
Floridian Carmen Damron got tickets through her chapter of Moms for Liberty, a political organization that has lobbied to curb classroom discussions on gender identity and sex-education issues. She was feeling optimistic about the midterm elections, she said, because she thinks the Democrats have allowed socialists to “hijack their party.” That was a refrain sung by many speakers on the main stage, who invoked Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in their remarks. At one point, the jumbotron featured a risqué selfie of the controversial progressive commentator Hasan Piker .
Trump took his own swipes at the “radical left lunatics,” but not without some unkind words for his own party brethren. “He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen,” Trump said of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton . The audience laughed, perhaps a little nervously: Paxton is in an unusually tight Senate race that many local attendees are worried about.
“People think that all Texans are just Trump-loving and gun-loving people, but that’s just not the case,” said Hannah Sviontek, who lives in Tarrant County, Texas. “This state is the battleground for this country.”
‘This state is the battleground for this country,’ said Hannah Sviontek. ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
More than 90 minutes into the speech, the president finally mentioned Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk , who was killed a year ago Thursday. Trump cast it as a rallying cry for his own party. “For a brief moment, the mask came off the radical left, and you saw what they were really all about,” he said. Erika Kirk , Charlie’s widow, received a standing ovation.
Otherwise, Trump played his greatest hits—waxing about “the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world” in between attacks on the “fake news” and the “Dumocrats.” Speaking of greatest hits: Michael Cohen was at a concession stand just outside the convention floor. Trump’s former fixer doesn’t give interviews anymore, he told me, since he hosts his own podcast now. The president had recently appeared as a guest—quite a surprise, since Cohen had testified against him in both court and Congress.
“Give me a pretzel and a Diet Coke! ” he wheezed in his best Trump voice to the cashier. “He didn’t like it when I used to do that.”
Some attendees were looking to the future of the party—November, yes, and also 2028. ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
Sean Spicer, the first press secretary of Trump’s first term, had more than a dozen credentials hanging from his neck and two more in his pocket, a reflection of the liminal space he now occupies between creator and operative.
“The vibes are amazing—almost as good as the food,” Spicer said of the event.
How was the food?
“I don’t know, I haven’t eaten anything yet.”
More than half of Trump’s cabinet was present, taking in the president’s speech from a VIP box with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson. There was a much weaker showing among Republican lawmakers, who had to pony up $25,000 each to attend. Only nine GOP House candidates running in the most tossup races made the trip.
Vice President JD Vance will give his keynote address on Thursday. ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
Michael Whatley, a former RNC chair in a tight Senate race in North Carolina, said he disagreed with those who thought it was foolish to share the stage with the president in Dallas. “It’s an important opportunity to get a message out to everybody across North Carolina about the contrast in this race,” he said, referring to his opponent, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
Jay Feely, a first-time candidate running for a House seat in Arizona, felt similarly. “Any chance you get to one, represent your state and advocate for Arizona, and two, talk to a national audience, I’m always going to take advantage of that,” he said.
ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
Many attendees hadn’t paid to be there, getting tickets from state parties or nonprofits or a public lottery. But everyone wanted to watch another episode of the Trump show. ANDRES KUDACKI FOR WSJ
Trump had begun speaking around the second quarter of the NFL season opener between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks. Feely was the only man there who had appeared on both stages—at the convention, just minutes before kickoff, and as a kicker for 15 years in the NFL. (He drafted New England Patriots wide receiver A.J. Brown for his fantasy team, so he had a rooting interest.)
Who did he think Americans would tune in to watch?
“I think we’ll have to wait and see, you know, what the numbers show,” Feely said, “but I think America wants to know what Republicans believe and what their plan is for the future.”
If the NFL kickoff game garnered more attention, Chelsea Hicks, who’d come with friends from the Fort Worth area, chalked it up to poor planning. The convention was inconvenient—the first Wednesday after Labor Day, starting in the middle of the afternoon. Plus, “they’re not marketing it well,” Hicks said. “They’re reaching the same people inside the same circles, and they’re not running it like a business person. How do we get new leads?”
