“There is hope,” Robinson said to loud cheers. “And I am proof.”
The Milwaukee convention, say party leaders from Donald Trump on down, was all about unity, bringing the country together days after the former president narrowly missed being assassinated. And in some of the speeches, there was evidence of a toned-down approach, with figures who normally trade in divisive and conspiracy-fueled rhetoric making gestures toward more inclusive themes. The convention came as the Trump campaign touted the GOP as a party for all, and attempted to expand the electoral map.
But the gathering also underscored how speakers with views once considered fringe have seeped into the conservative mainstream. Researchers who study far-right movements say their prominence reflects the scope of radicalism that courses through the party and is likely to inform a second Trump presidency should he win in November.
“Extremism is currency,” said professor John Horgan, director of the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University. “There’s no good political or strategic reason to root it out when it is a shortcut to ensuring political engagement. It mobilizes followers, generates funds, and effectively demonizes the other side.”
From the opening night of the convention, appeals for restraint have mixed uneasily with far more combative language, including chants of, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — Trump’s words when he reappeared, bloodied, after the attack Saturday.
Analysts say a stew of extreme ideologies simmers under the softer image the RNC projected this week of a party that would make room for any MAGA-style patriot, whether a rap-world model or a Nicaraguan immigrant or a Sikh attorney. And despite efforts to mute the most extreme rhetoric, hostility has still bubbled up, with speakers winning applause for verbal attacks on transgender people and migrants, among others.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) focused his speech on violence committed by undocumented immigrants and accused Democrats of allowing them into the country to gain votes, a theory unsubstantiated by the facts.
“Every day, Americans are dying — murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released,” he said. Delegates held up signs reading “Mass Deportation Now.”
Robinson, a rising GOP star who’s in a tight race for governor of North Carolina, has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ language and Christian nationalism. He drew outrage for a speech at a church last month in which he said, “Some people need killing.” Mike Lonergan, Robinson’s campaign spokesman, said on X that the candidate’s words referenced World War II enemies and were taken out of context in a “gutless and dishonest smear.”
Speaking the same night was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has promoted far-right ideologies including White nationalism, Christian nationalism, Islamophobia and various conspiracy theories. Greene has said that if she had led the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, “it would’ve been armed” and “we would have won.” At the RNC, she ridiculed Democrats for observing Transgender Visibility Day, for allowing “millions of illegal aliens to pour in” and for failing to provide “unity.”
Charlie Kirk, head of the influential right-wing student group Turning Point USA, was also given a prominent speaking slot. Kirk promotes a Christian nationalist movement that seeks religious influence in all aspects of government and society. When he spoke to the convention, he stuck mostly to economic anxieties among young Americans.
In a brief interview on the floor of the convention Wednesday, Kirk said that appeals for unity do not conflict with repeated calls from Republicans to “Fight, fight, fight.”
“We’re rallying to his immediate rallying cry. It also means that we’re not going to give up, that we’re going to continue to push forward,” Kirk said. “We’re going to continue to organize and we’re not going to allow President Trump getting shot to ruin our movement.”
Spokespeople for the RNC did not return messages seeking comment.
The delegates who announced the vote tallies for Trump that preceded his official nomination included GOP figures with extremist ties. Idaho’s Dorothy Moon, for example, ran a letter-writing campaign for a militia group leader who was involved in an armed standoff with federal agents. Another delegation head, Arizona’s Shelby Busch, recently told a gathering that she would “lynch” a Jewish county official she has been critical of, later describing the phrase as “political hyperbole.”
The Washington Post reported that Republicans involved with the convention included several who were present for the rally and attack on the U.S. Capitol. Ed Martin, the deputy policy director of the convention platform committee, was in the mob outside the Capitol. At least three other people photographed in the crowd that day are serving as delegates.
Although both Democrats and Republicans engage in political mudslinging, observers say there is a fundamental difference — especially during the Trump era.
“I agree with the call to bring down the temperature. But the fact of the matter is, where the temperature is really high is on the far right and with figures” including convention headliners, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “It’s not a normal thing to hear Democrats talking about televised military tribunals or going after your enemies or killing people.”
Within the convention, White supremacist or anti-government symbols of the sort that are sometimes visible at Trump rallies were scarce among attendees, though one woman sported a dress designed like an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which is associated with Christian nationalism and political violence. All week, far-right provocateurs such as Benny Johnson and Laura Loomer roamed the halls and posted on social media.
Trump “blew me a kiss from the stage,” Loomer, a self-described White nationalist and Islamophobe, boasted alongside a video showing Trump sending her an air kiss and exchanging pleasantries after his speech.
Texas delegate Adolpho Telles, 74, noted that the gathering also featured more establishment Republican figures, such as former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, along with some surprise appearances that were interpreted as gestures toward national unity.
“We had a Teamster union boss here, and that just floored me,” said Telles, a retired accountant. “I didn’t expect that.”
Telles said he didn’t think calls for unity and the chants of “Fight, fight, fight” sent contradictory messages, explaining that Republicans were not calling for literal combat.
“A physical fight — that’s never accepted, okay?” he said. “But when we have fights, and if I disagree with you, we’re going to have discussions and maybe we walk away agreeing not to agree. But that’s okay, too.”
The Trump factor
In the buzz over Trump’s arrival at the RNC on Monday — his first public event since the attack — cameras skimmed over a familiar face sitting in the same row as the former president.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, was ousted last year but still occupies a powerful perch in the conservative movement. Beirich, the extremism monitor, said Carlson was arguably the single biggest catalyst for mainstreaming the great replacement theory, which imagines the engineered replacement of White Christian Americans.
The ideology has inspired mass shootings, including the 2019 attack on shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso that killed 23 and injured dozens.
Carlson’s Thursday night speaker slot at the RNC sent an alarming message, said Freddy Cruz, a program manager at Western States Center, an anti-extremism watchdog group.
“It’s essentially giving a green light to a lot of these ideas,” Cruz said. “This isn’t simply a conspiracy theory when you’re talking about the great replacement theory. This has had real-world consequences.”
Trump himself has a history of disparaging Black and Hispanic people, Muslims, women, and many other groups. His running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), also has espoused far-right talking points, playing down the seriousness of the Capitol attack and using replacement theory language in statements about immigration.
Trump’s address Thursday was anticipated as a barometer for the GOP’s seriousness about dialing back the heat. The former president told an interviewer after the shooting that he was overhauling the “humdinger” of a speech he initially planned to deliver and instead was thinking about it as “a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together.”
Beirich said the messages of Trump and his allies at the RNC and on the Truth Social platform don’t point to a different tack — only more bombast and conspiratorial thinking.
“They’ve changed our culture,” Beirich said of the MAGA movement’s impact. “They’ve coarsened it, racialized it, and heightened discussions about political violence in a way that was unacceptable before.”
Mixed messages
Republican appeals for unity after the assassination attempt arrived so abruptly that some convention speakers struggled to keep up.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he’d quickly rewritten remarks to align with the healing theme, but then the older version of his speech was loaded into the teleprompter.
That, he explained to PBS, was why his intended message of “unity” instead accused Democrats of posing “a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people.”
A common refrain among speakers was that issues shouldn’t be viewed as red or blue but “red, white and blue.” But GOP speakers also promised mayhem if Democrats continue to lead.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Trump family friend who appeared onstage with his bulldog, Babydog, painted a dire picture: “We become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) warned that the radical left seeks to tear down American values and “remold us into some sort of borderless, lawless, Marxist, socialist utopia.”
“We’re here to say: Not on our watch,” Johnson told the RNC.
Perhaps the most conciliatory message came from Haley, who said Trump invited her to speak “in the name of unity.”
In addition to calling on the nation to come together, Haley encouraged the GOP to expand its ranks, a direct challenge to far-right party leaders fomenting hostility toward marginalized communities.
“We are stronger when we welcome people into our party with different backgrounds and experiences,” Haley told the crowd.
Behind the scenes, an attempt to do that was backfiring. The previous day, Harmeet Dhillon, a California Republican official, had delivered a Sikh prayer from the convention podium with a scarf draped loosely around her head.
Some Republicans celebrated the moment as a refreshing showcase of GOP diversity. But some in the party’s hard-right Christian base accused Dhillon of positioning her faith as worshiping “the one true god,” a slight to Christianity.
As Haley was onstage urging the crowd to embrace a big-tent Republican vision, Dhillon was on the receiving end of bigoted online attacks from fellow conservatives Across social media, pro-Trump commenters blasted her “satanic chants” and “witchcraft,” calling her a “pagan blasphemer” and demanding her deportation. Dhillon is a U.S. citizen.
Again and again, she posted the same reply on X, “There is only one God.” Her supporters also pushed back, touting Dhillon’s service as a legal adviser on Trump’s 2020 campaign and her involvement in Women for Trump.
Still, the attacks continued. The “unity” theme hadn’t stuck.
“Blocking quite a few people,” an apparently exasperated Dhillon wrote on X.
Wingett Sanchez and Marley reported from Milwaukee.
