{"id":924,"date":"2026-09-11T23:40:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=924"},"modified":"2026-09-11T23:40:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:40:52","slug":"trumps-boomer-palooza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=924","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Boomer-palooza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It\u2019s nearly 9 p.m. inside<\/b> Dallas\u2019s American Airlines Center, and Trump supporters are waving their cowboy hats in the air. They are slowly rocking from side to side as Lee Greenwood belts out \u201cGod Bless the USA\u201d<\/span> to the party faithful. The mood is triumphant, even euphoric, particularly once the president enters stage left. He is about to announce the dawn of a new golden age, but there\u2019s a catch: \u201cYou know what happens if you don\u2019t vote?\u201d he asks. \u201cYou go to hell. You know that, okay? You go to hell, and I don\u2019t want that to happen to you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more The working class isn\u2019t asking for pity<\/a><\/p>\n

This week\u2019s GOP midterm convention \u2014 the first of its kind in more than 40 years \u2014 was supposed to be the big reset for a party hemorrhaging public support amid an unpopular war, rising fuel prices, and a broader cost-of-living crisis. Against this grim backdrop, the gathering, which became known as Trumpapalooza, was a chance for the party to regroup, fire up the base, and wrest back control of a narrative that could derail its electoral hopes in November.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It ended with the threat of eternal damnation (albeit a jokey one).<\/span><\/p>\n

Trumpapalooza was meant to remind Republicans why they had put their faith in the president in the first place. But it had almost the opposite effect, drawing attention to just how different the man standing before them today was from the one they knew 10, or even two, years ago. He could still command a crowd with his impressions of Emmanuel Macron and his pronunciation of Lenin as \u201cLen-een.\u201d But beneath the cheers, it became clear that the populist fire that once drove the Trumpist insurgencies of 2016 and 2024 had greatly diminished, if not been extinguished altogether. Young conservatives, in particular, appeared to have all but abandoned the project, leaving behind a graying bunch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly everyone I spoke to at the convention acknowledged that a generational divide inside the party was emerging. Some dismissed it as a youthful rebellion, while others offered a bleaker diagnosis. They argued that Trump was the final string in the Republican bow, and once that snapped, there was no coming back. He was supposed to be the galvanizing force around which the entire movement was built. Now, he had become the very thing pulling it apart.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conventions are rarely known for attracting<\/b> the young and hip. And Trumpapalooza was no different. Inside this jumbo-sized arena, where every doorway and entrance was festooned with some kind of Trump poster, it looked more like a Caribbean cruise holiday than a political convention. The vast majority of the crowd were retirees, dressed head to toe in their finest MAGA regalia: sequin jackets with \u201cDJT\u201d emblazoned on the back, star-spangled cowboy boots, and T-shirts with Trump\u2019s Georgia mugshot on the front. There was no alcohol, but spirits were so high I thought something had been slipped into their drinks. It was like Glastonbury for boomercons.<\/span><\/p>\n

On both days, the stadium was slow to fill and never reached full capacity. It did, however, grow lively as familiar faces took to the stage. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas got one of the biggest cheers of the convention when he declared that \u201cSharia law has no place in America\u201d \u2014 a point that was echoed, again and again, by other speakers. Most focused on the twin threat of Islamo-communism, punctuated by a recorded message from Trump intoning, \u201cAmerica must never be a communist country,\u201d between each speech.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was like a form of exposure therapy, repeated so many times that it felt more like a mantra than a message. Older attendees lapped it up, but the few young conservatives I spoke to were less impressed. \u201cSo far, all I\u2019ve heard is communism, communism, communism, and that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon,\u201d said one. \u201cIt\u2019s like their brains have broken.\u201d Another told me that he wasn\u2019t even sure why he came.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of their frustration stemmed from the president\u2019s outright denial that anything was wrong. In his two keynote speeches, Trump struck a jubilant tone, celebrating \u201cthe most successful two years, financially and every other way, in the history of the presidency.\u201d But it was clear that very few were buying into this narrative. Even Fox\u2019s Laura Ingraham, a longtime supporter of the president, <\/span>told<\/span> Trump that he would be \u201ccruising\u201d if he hadn\u2019t invaded Iran, adding that young men were feeling \u201cdemoralized.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

They have every reason to be. The same day Trump declared that Iran had been decimated, Tehran-backed Houthi forces seized a major Red Sea port, potentially giving the group greater control over a key oil-shipping route and threatening to destabilize already-shaky global energy markets. Core inflation also <\/span>grew<\/span> last month, further squeezing Americans\u2019 finances at a time when gas and food prices were already rising. No one at the convention wanted to talk about these grim developments \u2014 it was a convention, not a town hall, after all \u2014 and this was about keeping up appearances.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more America\u2019s awful post-9\/11 remake<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, it was a telling moment on the first day of the convention that young people appeared more interested in sideline remarks from <\/span>Groyper-courting<\/span> James Fishback, who lost the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary to Rep. Byron Donalds last month, than in any of the speeches taking place inside the stadium. As he wandered around the arena, greeting fans and even <\/span>having a t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate<\/span> with the far-Right firebrand Laura Loomer, Fishback was trailed by a phalanx of young Republicans hanging on his every word.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGuys like James Fishback and Nick Fuentes are guys we have to consider,\u201d Steve Bannon, Trump\u2019s former chief adviser, tells me. \u201cYoung people are telling older people that they don\u2019t want to hear about legal immigration anymore because legal immigrants are stealing their jobs. They\u2019re not hearing about mass deportations anymore, either. Young people are feeling the brunt of that. They don\u2019t care about the Greater Israel project.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This may be an extreme position, but it reflects the anti-establishment sentiment coursing through the young Right <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> Left. Both camps share a deep hostility toward the party establishment and a desire for a far more radical policy program. One side wants no borders. The other wants a sealed border. One wants to abolish ICE. The other wants to deport millions. One wants to abolish the Senate. The other wants a CEO-monarch. The only point on which the two sides converge is Israel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked Sean Spicer, Trump\u2019s former press secretary, if he is concerned by this dynamic. He agreed that young voters had become more populist in the last few years, but it did not pose a major problem for the GOP. \u201cYoung voters are very transactional, and they\u2019re not as motivated as seniors,\u201d he says. \u201cIf they\u2019re not going to vote Republican, I\u2019d rather they just don\u2019t vote. That\u2019s not great, but it\u2019s not the worst scenario.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem, though,<\/b> is that the longer these issues are ignored by the GOP leadership, the more space they create for irresponsible actors to exploit them. Israel is the clearest example. In recent years, an overdue conversation about recalibrating US-Israeli relations has curdled into something far uglier on the Right, with the rise of figures such as <\/span>Candace Owens<\/span>, Fuentes, and Fishback. Yet this has prompted no soul-searching among party leaders, who refuse to countenance any kind of debate on the issue. Just last night, RFK Jr. randomly pivoted from health issues to praising the Jewish state as a \u201cbulwark of democracy\u201d and \u201cAmerica\u2019s most critical frontline ally.\u201d It was exactly the kind of rote statement that will be clipped, circulated, and mocked among Zoomer circles.<\/span><\/p>\n

A little more than 40 years ago, V.S. Naipaul <\/span>went<\/span> to the Republican National Convention, also in Dallas. He bemoaned the quality of speeches, complaining that all contained \u201cthe same tone, the same personality (or absence of it), the same language: unallusive, cleansed, sterile; nerveless and dead; computer language, programmed sometimes to rise to passion, but getting no higher than copywriter\u2019s glib,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAs though, at the heart of this great, man-magnifying occasion, there was a hollow, a vacancy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, that vacancy feels deeper than ever. As one young attendee succinctly put it to me: \u201cIt\u2019s over, but we\u2019re not allowed to say it\u2019s over.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Welcome to the AI doom wars<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s nearly 9 p.m. inside Dallas\u2019s American Airlines Center, and Trump supporters are waving their cowboy hats in the air. They are slowly rocking from side to side as Lee Greenwood belts out \u201cGod Bless the USA\u201d to the party faithful. The mood is triumphant, even euphoric, particularly once the president enters stage left. 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