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At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, attendees spoke of the kindness and good nature of their local residents, but there was something else in the air: a new kind of tolerance for Donald Trump.
I spent a lot of time outside the security perimeter, or “the zone” as it was locally called, preferring to talk to people who weren’t generally wearing lanyards or ID for work.
Fox News Digital columnist David Marcus with his new friends Scott and Lizzie.
I stopped by the Milwaukee Brat Bar near the entrance to the Republican National Convention a few times, mainly because they had a cigarette vending machine there, and my favorite snack is hard to find in the area.
One afternoon, as I was collecting my change, I heard a man and a woman talking. They were in their 30s and looked nice. I couldn’t tell if they were a couple, co-workers, or friends. I heard the woman say, “I think I’m starting to lean towards Trump, too.”
To me, a comment like that was like a ’49er striking a gold mine, so I politely introduced myself and asked if I could ask him a few questions.
I wanted to know when her attitude towards the former president started to soften. She wasn’t sure. It was gradual, but she thinks the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump accelerated it. The man told me he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. When I asked him if he supported him then, he said, “No.” But ’24? Yes, I support him now.
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It wasn’t policy-driven, it wasn’t a question of “Is it better than it was four years ago?” It was more like finding a way to put up with an annoying member of your friend group: Trump was no longer a reason to turn down an invitation to a dinner party.
The next day, over lunch at Foods on Third, I met Jay and Jeff, both staunch Trump supporters. Jay, who works in advertising and is in his 50s, comes to the area every day for lunch to check out the situation.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at Sunset Park in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 9, 2024. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Their enthusiasm was high: Both men saw the iconic image of Trump raising his fist after being shot as a game changer, and they seemed euphoric about the prospect of a second term for Trump.
One of the questions I’ve asked staunch Trump supporters over the years is if they know how their coworkers feel about Trump. Both Jeff and Jay admit that, while they’re not shy about it now, they used to be. I hear that a lot.
Trump is no longer taboo, and one cannot help but wonder if that is one of the reasons why Joe Biden is no longer in the race.
The closest I got to seeing Milwaukee’s friendliness was when my friends left me at a hotel one night. I went out to dinner and told them to let me know when I was back at the hotel. After dinner, I texted them, “Where are you?”
They were in a hotel.
It wasn’t the end of the world: I had intended to take an Uber, but I was out of cigarettes so I returned to Brats, where I met Scott and Lizzie, a married couple who looked like they could be at an electro-clash nightclub in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2004, and looked nothing like their RNC cohorts.
But they were Trump supporters, so we ended up talking, and I told them my story, and that’s when Scott looked at Lizzy, he said yes, and they offered me a ride.
“You can’t ask me to do that,” I said in my Northeastern voice. “It would take 30 minutes.”
He said, “You’re not asking, we’re giving,” and I said, “You know what? Sure.” That was probably the most Midwestern thing I’d ever heard.
On the way back to the hotel, a massive thunderstorm shook the sky with giant bolts of lightning. This was the heart of America, ordinary and honest. We talked about kids, their incredible joys and challenges. We also played a game I invented in the ’90s based on the sitcom Friends. Lizzie won.
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But we got to talking about politics, and it turned out that all three of us had slowly been accepting of Trump. We talked about how his new running mate, J.D. Vance, was a Never-Trump guy. All of us, or at least most of us, seemed to be. We agreed that it was so new and so crazy to embrace him so fully. But it was also a natural evolution that many of us had been through.
I told them the story of election night in 2016, when I asked my mentor, “What are you going to do now?” and he said, “I’m going to call balls or strikes. If he does something I like, I’m going to say so, and if he does something I don’t like, I’m going to say so.”
Lizzy, Scott, and I all agreed that there were more things we liked than things we didn’t like.
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When I got back to the hotel and told my friends what had happened, one of them said, “That’s a typical Dave Marcus story.” Maybe it is, but that’s only in America. In Texas, California, and countless other places, strangers have given me rides because they liked me.
But there was something new in Wisconsin: Trump is no longer taboo, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s part of why Joe Biden is no longer in the race.
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