Republicans gathered in Dallas on Wednesday for a highly unusual two-day midterm convention, a first for the party, that will put President Donald Trump at the center of this fall’s midterm elections.
Trump delivered a keynote address Wednesday in which he promised to send $5,000 to every adult U.S. citizen if the Republicans win the House and Senate in this fall’s midterm elections. It’s unclear how the payments would work or whether such a plan,
which would cost over $1 trillion, is legal.
The president plans to give closing remarks after Vice President JD Vance gives his own speech on Thursday. Members of Trump’s Cabinet will also address the convention. Democrats, meanwhile, are planning their own counterprogramming.
Republicans hope the event, which is part rally and part fundraiser, will help catapult their candidates into November, primarily by highlighting the first two years of Trump’s term. The president has insisted that running on his record will give the GOP their best shot at winning, even as his own poll numbers sag.
In an exchange with reporters before his flight to the convention, Trump said oil prices that have surged because of the Iran war likely won’t come down until after the midterm elections. An AP-NORC poll in July offered a stark repudiation of Trump’s handling of the conflict, as results showed about two-thirds of U.S. adults say the war with Iran has not been worthwhile.
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The first night of the Republican midterm convention wrapped up Wednesday, with the president’s familiar refrain that he would make America great again.
The gathering continues on Thursday, when it will wrap up.
Trump says he’ll be taking the stage once again tomorrow — but says he won’t go on as long as he did tonight.
“I gave you a lot of material. I don’t have to do it twice,” he says as he wrapped up his remarks.
Republicans at the midterm convention broke out in chants of “Charlie, Charlie,” in recognition of conservative activist Charlie Kirk after Trump acknowledged that Thursday is the year anniversary of his fatal shooting.
“What shocked millions of Americans was not only the fact that Charlie was murdered, as bad as it was, but also how many people made an excuse for it or cheered for it,” Trump said.
Trump also singled out Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, who was seated at the convention next to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
GOP convention speakers are delivering a steady stream of attacks on Democrats, and they’re singling out one candidate more than any other: Abdul El-Sayed.
The Michigan Senate candidate is a progressive proponent of Medicare for all and a critic of Israel.
Trump singled him out during his keynote remarks, saying he’d pack the Supreme Court with “far left lunatic justices.”
“The Democrats want to make this extremist a U.S. senator,” he said.
Some of the GOP attacks have included references to his Muslim faith and suggestions that he’s sympathetic to the 9/11 attackers.
“This evil man pals around with people who believe Americans deserved to be attacked on 9/11,” said Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican. He was referring to Hasan Piker, a left-wing Twitch streamer who campaigned with El-Sayed. Piker has apologized for saying “America deserved 9/11″ and El-Sayed called the comment “dumb.”
Rep. Brandon Gill used the candidate’s full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, and called him “an extremist who sympathized with terrorists.”
Trump’s pledge to give $5,000 to adult citizens in the U.S. if Republicans retain control of Congress in November would cost over $1 trillion.
The Census Bureau doesn’t tally the number of citizens, but estimates nearly 270 million adults live in the U.S. But even conservative estimates of the non-citizen resident population would push the cost of Trump’s promise into ten-figures.
The pledge is greater than the initial stimulus Trump and Congress sent to U.S. households in the opening days of the COVID-19 pandemic when the $1,200 per adult checks were capped at household incomes up to $198,000.
Trump said that prescription drug prices have dropped “400, 500 and even 600 percent.”
That’s mathematically impossible. Cutting drug prices by more than 100% would theoretically mean that people are being paid to take medications.
The president complained that he’s not getting credit for building the ballroom that he said other presidents have wanted for years.
And Trump said he won’t even be able to use it for long – just “a few months.” His second, and final, term at the White House ends in 2029.
“People forget, you know, they say, ‘He’s building a ballroom for himself.’ No, I’ll be there for a few months,” Trump said.
The president says that, if Republicans win the House and Senate in this fall’s midterm elections, each adult U.S. citizen will receive $5,000.
It’s unclear how the payments would work or whether such a plan is legal.
But he is comparing it to cash distribution to shareholders when a company is successful.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us,” he says, adding that his “Trump dividends” would need to be spent in the U.S.
Much of the Parma Republican Party had left its evening meeting by the time Trump took the stage late Wednesday at a watch party outside Cleveland.
The roughly 10 Republicans who stayed cheered Trump’s remarks on the border and laughed at his jokes. The only boos came when he mentioned Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
But local City Councilor Kevin Kussmaul, who was in attendance, said the convention may matter less in November than voters’ pocketbooks.
“I think the real thing that’ll move the needle is going to be the economics,” Kussmaul said. “Gas prices, grocery prices.”
Trump acknowledged that the Iran war caused energy prices to spike and financial markets to struggle. But said it was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“Our stock market hit records, we were doing great and oil was low” before the war, he said.
The convention is meant to help GOP election prospects in the midterms, but the president talked at length about the war, which has weighed on his presidency since he joined Israel in striking Iran more than six months ago.
He polled the audience, which affirmed his decision.
“Does anyone here think Iran should have a nuclear weapon?” he asked. The crowd responded with a resounding “no.”
Trump gave a shoutout to the congressional leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson, praising the Republican who wrangles a narrow majority as “the greatest speaker.”
But when Trump name-checked Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the convention crowd was not pleased. Boos filled the convention hall, even as Trump insisted that Thune, with his own slim majority, is working hard.
Thune had earlier posted a photo with fellow South Dakotans at the convention.
Trump drew cheers for his executive order renaming the U.S. portion of Lake Ontario to Lake America, a recent move to troll the Canadians. He previously renamed the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
He brought up an idea he first floated over the weekend to give the state of New Mexico a new name, New America.
“The people love the idea,” he said. He mused about renaming the Pacific or Atlantic ocean, but added, “I don’t think you can do both.”
And he set his sights farther afield, saying he should rename the Strait of Hormuz after himself.
“We’ll call it the Trump Strait, and I’m sure the Iranian leadership will be thrilled with that,” Trump said.
And he gave a nod to how much the strait has bedeviled his foreign policy.
“I should get something out of it,” Trump said, emphasizing the word “something.”
Trump said his administration is addressing affordability.
“Our predecessors killed and buried the American dream,” he said during the midterm Republican convention in Dallas. “We’re fixing it. We’re fixing it now.”
As of about 30 minutes into Trump’s remarks, only about 3,500 viewers were streaming the president’s speech live on the Republican National Committee’s YouTube page and about 2,600 on the midterm convention’s official channel. About 6,300 were watching on the Fox New YouTube channel.
All told, they are relatively modest figures for Trump, whose campaign rallies in 2024 would regularly attract tens of thousands of concurrent viewers on some streams.
Among the major news networks, only Fox News is carrying Trump’s speech to Republicans in its entirety. The broadcast networks are in regular programming, including NFL Football being carried on NBC.
CNN carried about 15 minutes of Trump’s remarks before cutting away to a panel, as reporters offered commentary on the speech in text annotations on screen.
Trump claimed that “the Democrats gave us the worst and most dangerous border in American history with 25 million illegal aliens pouring in,” an allegation he makes often in reference to the Biden administration.
But the figure is highly inflated. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports more than 10.8 million arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico from January 2021 through December 2024.
That’s arrests, not people. Under pandemic-era asylum restrictions, many people crossed more than once until they succeeded because there were no legal consequences for getting turned back to Mexico. So the number of people is lower than the number of arrests.
Trump claimed that more than $20 trillion has been invested in the U.S. and that the number could go up to $25 trillion. He has cited increasingly higher numbers throughout his second term.
But Trump has presented no evidence that he has secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum.
The White House website offers a far lower number, $11.2 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.
He repeated a plan to visit as many top battlegrounds as possible before Election Day, which he outlined recently at the White House. Winning the Texas Senate race is crucial, he said.
“I’ll be coming back to Texas because we have to elect Ken Paxton,” Trump said. “If I have to, I’ll come back twice or three times.”
He joked that he’ll be in the state so much that Texans will get tired of seeing him.
He also jabbed at Paxton’s appearance, repeating jokes he’s made several times in recent weeks about the Texas attorney general.
“You may not like the way he looks,” Trump said, quickly adding that in Texas history, Paxton is “the single greatest attorney general.”
But Paxton’s attire when he spoke hours earlier got Trump’s nod of approval.
“Tonight he looked very spiffy in his blue suit,” Trump said.
Trump had a plea for Americans early in his speech: “I’m asking you to let us finish the job.”
If that sounded familiar, it might be because another president used the same line. President Joe Biden, made a similar plea in his 2023 State of the Union address.
“We’ve been sent here to finish the job!” Biden said three months after the 2022 midterm elections.
He noted that in past midterms, the president’s party has typically lost seats in Congress. That’s true of Trump’s first term, when Democrats flipped dozens of House seats to win control of the chamber.
“We’re going to change that,” he said.
Trump claimed that “we won the presidency three times,” referring to the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections.
He did not win the presidency in 2020, despite his repeated claims otherwise. Democrat Joe Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
“If we hand America’s future to the radical-left Democrats, our nation will spend the next decade just getting back on its feet. It’ll be a tragedy,” the president said.
“Vote Republican and we will leave the world in our dust for generations to come.”
The crowd erupted into cheers of “USA!” and loud applause as the president took the stage in Dallas. He was introduced by Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the USA.”
And behind him, a curtain raised to reveal a packed section of supporters who mostly appeared to be women, holding American flag posters.
UFC had a moment in the spotlight at the the president’s midterm Republican convention.
Bo Nickal and Justin Gaethje, who competed at the event Trump held for his 80th birthday on the White House South Lawn, took the stage on Wednesday and praised the president.
“Nobody else would have held a UFC fight at the White House,” Gaethje said, adding that the event boosted the sport. “Thank you, President Trump, for doing that.”
Gaethje also made a political pitch, urging voters to support the GOP.
“This is about supporting President Trump and sending him Republican allies in Congress,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took the stage at the Republican convention and lauded Trump while attacking Democrats.
Bessent cast the midterm election as a stark choice that could undo Trump’s agenda, saying the first thing Democrats would do would be to “dismantle the gains we’ve made under President Trump.”
In particular, he praised Trump Accounts, tax-advantaged accounts enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that can be opened for any child under 18. Babies born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, can get $1,000 in seed money from the U.S. Treasury.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group, was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
He was later among those who benefited from Trump’s sweeping clemency action on his first day back in the White House after winning a second term.
Blanche said at the midterm convention that Trump turned “soft-on-crime” laws around.
“President Trump and the vice president said that they have always and they will always back the blue. They put American families first. They prove that that order and prosperity go hand in hand,” he said.
Blanche’s appearance at the convention has raised eyebrows because Justice Department leaders don’t typically speak at such events given the agency’s tradition of political independence.
The Justice Department has defended the move, saying in a social media post on Thursday that Blanche was appearing in his personal capacity and said it was “legal (and has been approved by ethics).”
The Republican midterm convention zeroed in on Trump’s handling of immigration, spotlighting the story of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student who was killed while out for a run by a Venezuelan man.
GOP Rep. Mike Collins spoke after Riley’s family appeared in a video at the event. Collins is running against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia.
Collins sponsored legislation named after Riley that requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes. It was the first bill of Trump’s second administration to be signed into law.
The mood on the floor at the American Airlines Center is much like a traditional presidential-year nominating convention, without the, well, nomination.
Speaker after speaker is praising Trump, the leader of the party, around whom the entire event has been built to gin up Republican enthusiasm ahead of the midterms.
The Rev. Lorenzo Sewell ended his rousing speech reprising the mantra from Trump’s 2024 campaign, “Fight, fight, fight.”
Like any convention, the Texas delegation — this time seated at the very front — is obvious in the sea of white cowboy hats.
And attendees are waving U.S. flags and signs that read “Republicans Are Fixing Democrats’ Mess.” Even the balloons — red, white, blue and gold — are held in nets above the floor waiting to drop when the convention concludes Thursday.
The first lady was not at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas, where her husband was speaking later Thursday.
She was at the White House addressing a private Rose Garden reception honoring the White House Historical Association’s Presidential Sites Summit. It’s a regular gathering of leaders from presidential sites across the country.
In remarks that were released by her office, the first lady described the White House as an “architectural autobiography of America” and said the nation’s “ideals and stories are woven directly into the fabric of the White House.”
She also discussed her design work at the mansion, including the design and construction of a tennis pavilion, the renovation of the Queens’ Bedroom and the Queens’ Bathroom, conserving historic wallpaper discovered in the President’s Dining Room and restoring and upgrading the Rose Garden.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is in a tightly contested fight to win the Senate seat in the Republican-heavy state, got a hero’s welcome from the audience in Dallas.
“The press, the courts and the establishment all tried to take President Trump down, but he’s won every single time,” Paxton said, drawing cheers. It wasn’t a broad leap to Paxton himself, who has beaten impeachment and state and federal charges, all while winning reelection.
Paxton ravaged his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, describing him as worthy of representing Democratic-leaning California, and challenging his positions on transgender rights and his version of Christianity.
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman spoke to the GOP convention in Dallas, an extraordinary escalation in the worsening rupture between the Pennsylvanian and his party.
Fetter recorded a short video introducing Sen. Dave McCormick, a Pennsylvania Republican.
“I’m always going to stand with America,” Fetterman said. “I’m always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life.”
Standing in front of a steel mill, Fetterman said he “will work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life.”
He called McCormick “a great American.”
Fetterman has grown increasingly isolated from his party as he maintains staunch support of Israel’s war in Gaza and criticizes left-wing candidates who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. He’s often gone his own way in the Senate, voting repeatedly with Republicans to end the government shutdown last year while supporting multiple Trump nominations and opposing efforts to end the war in Iran.
The American Airlines Center is filling up as the evening wears on.
While the stadium isn’t full, many of the sections that previously stood empty are now dotted with red “Make America Great Again” hats and cheering supporters.
