Abby McCloskey, Bloomberg Opinion, September 11, 2026

“The GOP midterm convention in Dallas was mostly normal. Except for when it wasn’t.

Like before the event officially kicked off, when a short video came on the jumbotrons showing footage of a lion. A voiceover: the king of the jungle, is a lion with a mane. An image of President Trump. But in the jungle, there are jackals. Images of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sometimes the lion has to show the jackals who he is. Violent footage of the lion chasing the jackals down and killing them, again and again. Not normal.

Then the jumbotrons snapped back to their back to their red, white and blue colors. Texas pastor Jack Graham led an opening prayer. Country music from the 1990s (“I had a barbecue stain on my white T-shirt…”) filled the air. If I shut my eyes, I was back in the Texas airplane hangar in 2015 when Governor Rick Perry was announcing his second presidential run and I was running his policy team. Back to normal.

There were plenty of other moments like that . . . .”