Key Points
- Trump led Republican supporters in a personal loyalty pledge during the party’s midterm convention.
- He urged supporters to vote, echoed language about cheating, and warned nonvoters they would “go to hell.”
- Trump also proposed $5,000 payments if Republicans retain Congress, without explaining funding or congressional approval.
Donald Trump turned the Republican Party’s midterm convention into a full-blown MAGA loyalty ritual Thursday night, ordering supporters to raise their right hands and swear allegiance to him personally.
“Please raise your right hand,” Trump commanded the crowd in Dallas. “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States.”
The crowd repeated the line back to him.
Not the country. Not the Constitution. Trump had his supporters pledge themselves to Donald Trump, while he stood before them with his own hand raised.
But the cultlike spectacle was only getting started.
Trump continued feeding the audience lines to repeat, directing them to promise that they would round up their families and friends to vote in November. He then led them into something even more disturbing.
“I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try,” Trump said. “And cheat like hell like they do.”
The crowd obediently echoed his words.
It was an astonishing sight, with the sitting president of the United States presiding over a mass loyalty oath to himself while thousands of Republicans repeated language about cheating in an American election.
Trump then piled on some spiritual blackmail.
“You know what happens if you don’t vote?” he asked. “You go to hell. You know that? Okay? You go to hell.”
The president also begged supporters to do “the biggest favor you’ve ever done me” and instructed them to “pretend I’m on the ticket.”
“In a way I am on the ballot,” he declared.
And there it was. The entire convention, supposedly held to promote Republican candidates running for Congress, was once again reduced to a referendum on the ego, grievances and political survival of Donald Trump.
The loyalty ceremony came one night after Trump dangled another extraordinary fraudulent incentive before voters: a supposed $5,000 “Trump Dividend” for every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate.
The details hardly seemed to matter. The offer functioned as another demand for submission: Give Trump the Congress he wants and he will reward you. Refuse, and apparently you risk both losing the money and spending eternity in hell.
Trump’s closing act made the message unmistakable. This was no ordinary political convention and no ordinary get-out-the-vote speech. It was a president commanding a packed arena to raise their hands, proclaim his greatness and recite his words on cue.
The pledge made no mention of the United States, democratic government or any principle larger than Trump himself.
“So help me God,” Trump concluded.
The crowd went along with that, too.
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