The Republican Party just wrapped up the first midterm convention in American history. For two days, the American Airlines Center in Dallas was packed, with MAGA at the center of the political universe. President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and more than 100 other official speakers rallied the MAGA movement 54 days before an election that will decide whether Republicans keep the House and Senate or hand Congress back to a Democrat Party that has been taken over by communists and jihadists.
I was in Dallas for all of it. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s start with the good, because there was a lot of it.
The Good
President Trump delivered the speech of the convention on opening night, going for more than 90 minutes in front of a roaring crowd. He told Republicans to stop treating the midterms like an off-year. “Pretend that I’m on the ballot. I’m on the ballot,” he said, and he promised to personally campaign in roughly three dozen battleground races before Election Day.
President Trump announced a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” for every adult American citizen if Republicans hold both chambers of Congress, which was met with cheers and sent the media into a meltdown. Trump came back for the closing night as well, alongside Vice President Vance, who delivered a message every Republican needs to hear before the election:
“Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.”
That real story of the convention is that the party WAS UNIFIED. After a year that has revolved around a lot of infighting (Thomas Massie, Marjorie Traitor Greene) the entire Republican coalition showed up together.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent got one of the loudest ovations of the night when he warned that Democrats would dismantle everything the Trump administration has built. Democrat Senator John Fetterman appeared in a video endorsing Republican Dave McCormick. If he switches to the Republican Party, he will be welcomed with open arms for standing up against Islamic terrorism and supporting President Trump on key issues.
Several speakers attacked the radicals now in control of the Democrat Party, especially Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and his Hasan Piker fan club. But they didn’t go far enough in denouncing or even mentioning Islam or the Islamic-communist ideology that has taken over the left, but more on that later.
The venue was packed. The RNC put attendance at 20,000 in an arena that holds around 21,000, and by the time President Trump took the stage, the lower bowl where I was standing was full. The energy was amazing. Anyone who was actually in the building could see that the MAGA movement is not going anywhere. It is organized, it is motivated, and it is ready to fight this midterm election.
The Bad
The same media that spent two days pretending nobody showed up to Dallas has been lying about President Trump’s crowds for ten years, and they did it again. The Daily Beast, The New Republic, and Rachel Maddow’s blog at MS NOW all ran with the false “half-empty” arena narrative, using photos of the upper deck taken before the keynote while people were still coming through security, and, as attendees pointed out, with entire sections roped off for the media. Newsweek’s own photographer admitted the lower level was packed an hour before the President spoke.
President Trump said in front of the crowd: “Not only is this packed, but you have an equal number of people standing outside.” He was right.
He posted on Truth Social that the convention was a “major, sold-out hit” that “broke attendance records.” The press is still lying even though they were all there and saw exactly what I saw, because a packed arena of Republicans 54 days before the midterm election is not a story they want to tell. Remember how they treated President Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden? It’s the same thing.
One reporter was kicked out of the venue for her “gotcha journalism.” Tara Palmeri, the former ABC News and Politico reporter who now runs a podcast, brought three Epstein “survivors” who had been given guest passes, left the designated media area, and started ambushing people on the convention floor with questions about the Epstein files.
She cornered Republican congressional candidate Robert Burke for roughly eight minutes. Security asked whether the group was carrying signs, told her she was not in the media area, and revoked her credential. By 2:40 p.m., about 35 minutes after she walked in, she was out of the building, and according to her own account, she was told she would be arrested for trespassing if she came back. Using three abuse survivors as human props for a gotcha stunt inside the Republican Party’s convention is not journalism; it is activism, and everyone in attendance was required to follow rules in exchange for a media badge, myself included.
The other bad was across the street. Democrats set up a counter-convention in Dallas headlined by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who held a press conference at Dallas City Hall to call the GOP gathering “bizarre,” while Texas Democrats drove digital billboard trucks in circles around the American Airlines Center.
James Talarico, the Democrat running against Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate, was also in Dallas, where he admitted that he would vote to support packing the Supreme Court to ensure Democrat control of the judicial system forever.
“Binding codes of conduct for our justices. It’ll include term limits, and I am open to a discussion about expanding the number of justices,” Talarico said.
The Ugly
The convention ended on September 10, the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the night before the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by Islamic terrorists a quarter century ago.
Today the Democrat Party is running candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, they handed New York City to Zohran Mamdani, and Islamic immigrants are petitioning school boards to stop teaching about 9/11 in American public schools because they say it offends Muslims (just look at Fairfax County). This was the moment for the Republican Party to be honest and tell the truth about Islam, and they failed miserably.
By my count, out of 109 scheduled speakers, exactly one talked about Islamic jihad, and it was Ted Cruz. On the closing night, Cruz warned that a “new and dangerous red-green alliance” of communists and Islamists has taken over the Democrat Party. Sen. Cruz stated:
“The hate that killed Charlie Kirk, that knocked down the Twin Towers, that led to assassination attempts on President Trump … it just keeps getting worse… Islamism, likewise, produces murder and oppression, from the forced wearing of hijabs to the stoning of rape victims, from the systematic murder of homosexuals to the honor killings and barbarism of October 7th and 9/11… Sharia law has no place in America… When Hasan Piker says America deserved 9/11, believe him…
That was it. Apparently everyone else got the memo not to mention Islam or jihad, reading from a script about “socialists” and “the radical left,” as if the people cheering for Hamas in the streets of New York and Dearborn are just regular leftists, when they are Islamic-communists.
On Friday morning, the White House’s official 9/11 post said the peace of our Nation was “shattered by terrorists.” What type of terrorists? Naming the type of terrorists who carried out 9/11 is central to understanding why 9/11 happened. Islam did this. One would expect the Trump administration to not sanitize reality for the sake of appeasing Muslims, which made the omission of the word “Islamic” from their post even more concerning.
If the Republican Party cannot say the words “Islamic terrorists” on the 25th anniversary of the worst terror attack in American history, with a Democrat Senate candidate in Michigan who says he has an “obligation” to comply with Sharia law and a Mamdani-run New York City hosting “interfaith” 9/11 walks that end at an Islamic center, then the consultants running the party’s messaging have learned nothing and will lead Republicans to disaster in the midterms.
The crowd in Dallas cheered for Sen. Cruz’s remarks because they already know what the threat is. Everywhere you look in Texas, there is a mosque on every corner and a woman in full burqa inside every grocery store accompanied by at least four children. This serves as another reminder of how we are being replaced by foreigners who refuse to assimilate and who will never embrace American values. The MAGA base is not confused about who “the terrorists” are. Republicans have 54 days to catch up to their own voters. President Trump has given the party a unified movement, a packed arena, and a winning message on the economy, the border, and crime. Now, the party needs the courage to finish the sentence and score a final touchdown.
Twenty-five years later, and you are still not Islamophobic enough. It’s time for the GOP to read the room.
