“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ―George Bernard Shaw
Last night, at the RNC Convention, Make America Wealthy Once Again, Donald J. Trump walked into the room like the Gray Champion he is, battle-scarred but standing tall. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud. His supporters gave him the hero’s welcome he deserved. There was not a dry eye in the house.
It was apparent to anyone watching that this wasn’t your grandfather’s Republican Party anymore. The head of the Teamsters Union, Sean O’Brien? Big Tech whiz kid David Sacks and a former model named Amber Rose? Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
It’s Donald Trump’s party now, and he’ll build it the way he wants with what Steve Bannon calls “inclusive, participatory, nationalist populism.”
If the party could leave it to Trump, he’s got this. He’s got this so hard.
A clip with Pastor James Roemke doing a great Trump impression before the blessing.
And a powerful new Trump campaign ad:
Unfortunately, we know the Republican Party, right? We know they can’t just take the W. They will mess it up somehow, as James Lindsay says:
There’s an old joke that used to cycle around Hollywood. A filmmaking crew walks through the desert and comes upon a beautiful oasis. The writer can’t stop talking about how beautiful it is. The director envisions ways to bring it to the big screen. The producer? He whips it out and starts taking a leak. “What are you doing?!!” the others cry out. “Don’t worry,” the producer says, “I’m making it better.”
And so it goes with some of the old-guard Conservatives who are now grumbling about the MAGA takeover of the GOP. They want the party to be what it once was. But those days are gone, brother, and they ain’t coming back. It’s millennials and Zoomers from now on.
Welcome to the Fourth Turning. Once the dust settles and it’s all over, we’ll hopefully have a freer country that feels brand new. We’ll have rescued the country from the grips of the bloated leviathan that now rules over it with an authoritarian fist. It will be a country for the people, by the people, and of the people, and oh, how sweet it will be. If only the GOP could get out of their own way.
The Changing of the Minds
There is no chance I would have ever been accepted or invited into the old GOP. I lived my life exactly the wrong way, according to them. I followed the feminist lie and believed that the only thing I needed to do in life was serve myself. I had casual sex, I never got married, I had a child out of wedlock, and I had abortions. I’m not proud of it. I would take it all back if I could. I promise not a day will go by that I don’t mourn the loss of what could have been.
I did not see my life differently because I found religion or because I’m now a Conservative (I am in some ways but not in others). I see my life differently because I changed my mind.
There is nothing wrong with changing your mind. It’s healthy. And it’s brave. It took guts for the beautiful Amber Rose to take to the stage at the RNC and explain how and why she changed her mind. Her father, who served in the military, loved Donald Trump. She told him he was a racist, and her father said, prove it. But don’t listen to me, let her tell it:
That she changed her mind is not good enough for some of the Puritanical scolds on the Right, the very same people who would have kept me as far away from the GOP as possible.
One of them was the usually funny and not-at-all-stupid Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire.
Matt is clinging to a Republican Party that is no more and will never be. Maybe he doesn’t understand that things have to change. If you are going to be like Cotton Mather in Salem in 1692, you’re no better than the Left. I want nothing to do with that kind of mindset because, trust me, I’d be burned at the stake.
Matt Walsh wasn’t the only Republican out in force proving themselves to be exactly what the Left thinks of them, straight out of Central Casting for the Handmaid’s Tale. It was an ugly horseshoe with idiots from the Left and scolds from the right coming together to shame her and shame the RNC. The Daily Mail collected all of their tweets, and of course, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two sides.
I first heard of Amber Rose via Steve Bannon’s podcast, the War Room (Hi Steve, in prison! Miss you!) He played this clip:
He was so excited he could hardly sit still. This is it, he kept saying, Amber Rose! She gets it! She did her own research, and she found out what liars they were on the Left. She changed her mind!
She also helped make this catchy little tune:
I think Amber Rose is beautiful, whether she has tattoos on her body or not. But I also appreciate that she covered them up with a respectable black turtleneck to make a speech at the RNC. Guys like Matt Walsh can’t make me think less of her. I understand where he’s coming from, but his side is not going to win both their traditional hard line and the 2024 election.
Why does she bring in voters? She, along with Trump, Elon Musk, and others, is helping bring back “cool” to the Republican Party. As NS Lyons wrote:
All the organic energy now appears to be on the political right, because the right’s vibe is now not only “cooler” than the left but indeed does appear somehow “epic,” in the sense that it has come to feel (even to Trump’s enemies) almost as if it echoes the inexorable march of destiny – of History, which has not in fact ended. And, although this vibe is of course not in any way conservative in nature, it must inevitably function as a lethal acid to the progressive left. For one can be progressive only insofar as one has faith that the tide of history is behind you and you alone. Trump’s grinning arrival, astride his gleaming white golf cart, ruins their whole paradigm.
Even Zoomers are getting in on the act, according to this story in the Free Press.
If I’m not a Conservative, why should you listen to me? You should only listen to me if you want to win because that’s how you win. You offer up as big a tent as possible with the common goal of dismantling the Democratic Party and its empire.
As Steve Bannon always says, “Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save this country, then this country will be saved.”
Welcome to the right side of history, Amber Rose.
Why JD Vance is a Great Pick for Donald Trump
Speaking of the courage to change your mind, young JD, our first real millennial leader who might soon become our next Vice President, is now being raked over the coals for things he said once about Donald Trump.
The first abortion I had was the year JD Vance was born. I can’t look at him now and not regret that decision. You never know where you or your child will end up, even in the worst of circumstances. His mother was a mess and on drugs. He was raised by his grandmother, but who knew this special young child would emerge as one of the next generational leaders of this country?
Like JD Vance, many of us believed Trump was potentially a Hitler-esque fascist. But he changed his mind, he says, after watching how Trump governed. I didn’t change my mind about Trump until much later, until the Summer of 2020.
Watching the Conservatives help the Democrats gain the upper hand by crying and moaning about JD Vance as Trump was suffering through an evening with an ear half torn off by an assassin’s bullet made me feel like Marlon Brando in The Godfather:
Sean Trende has written that Vance brings nothing to the ticket to help Donald Trump win. The idea is that Marco Rubio would pull in Hispanic voters, Kim Reynolds would pull in Iowa, and Byron Donalds might help him win over the Black vote, etc.
Trende points out that Vance didn’t do so well in his home state of Ohio, where Mike DeWine won the governorship by a huge margin. But that was then. This is now. The Democratic Party is, as I’ve been saying for years, in a state of complete and total collapse. Isn’t that the same kind of identity politics the Right complains about on the Left?
I don’t know as much about elections as Trende, but as I see it, Trump did two things right with his choice of running mate. First, he honored his MAGA base, repeatedly telling him to pick JD Vance. Vance won polls taken of GOP voters. Secondly, and more importantly, Trump is eyeing 2028. He’s not thinking just about 2024.
Here is Ben Shapiro on Trump’s appointment of Vance and why that matters:
To me, the Republicans complaining about Vance sound like children crying that they didn’t get the toy they wanted on Christmas. They can’t just take the win and run with it. They have to punch themselves in the face time and time again.
Seriously, Caddyshack, hello!
Vance’s biggest issue will be his stance on abortion. He’s a catholic, and he is a hard-liner. You’d think that would make up for all of the complaining about how Trump wasn’t pro-life enough.
That will be the Left’s most powerful weapon against Vance, and he’d better prepare for Kamala Harris to lob sanctimony at him when they debate.
What I love about the Vance pick is his personal story, Hillbilly Elegy. The movie isn’t that great, but the way it was savaged and attacked by critics made me want to know more about JD Vance, and what I found in him was a thoughtful, honest person.
Hollywood and the Left seemed to love JD Vance when he was a staunch critic of Donald Trump. Otherwise, Hillbilly Elegy would never have been made at all. But when he crossed the Trump line, that was it. The claws came out.
Here is Ben Shapiro again:
Vance crawled out of poverty, escaped his mother’s drug addiction, and found his way out of the town he grew up in, hollowed out by bad trade deals and infested with fentanyl. Not only is that a great story, but it’s an important one. If you’re looking for a leader for the future, you need someone who sees the people our government abandoned long ago.
I love his story. It will inspire hope among millions of forgotten Americans, especially young men. We desperately need someone to help them in America right now. Their future has never looked more bleak. JD Vance was one of them. He found a way out. He’s a great role model for the generations to come. He’s not selling grievances or the past. He's showing them there is a better way forward.
The RNC Convention showed me what America really looks like - a broad spectrum of all kinds of people, but especially the people the Left no longer knows and refuses to see. That is a great start.
A few other speeches of note: Byron Donalds set the crowd into a frenzy, chanting Byron, Byron, Byron! He also would have been a great Veep pick.
And The All In podcast’s David Sacks:
Onward to tonight.
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The Courage to Change Your Mind