Walls, revenge and an even bigger cult of personality – welcome to Trump 2.0
The former president’s brush with death has made him a messiah in the eyes of some. Now he’s setting out far-reaching plans on migrants, Ukraine and cementing the GOP in his image.
Donald Trump stood on the stage of the Republican national convention, appearing serene and grateful, the lighting illuminating the layers of his golden hair like a halo.
“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said in a speech in Milwaukee, days after an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. “I stand before you this evening with a message of confidence, strength and hope that we’ll begin the four greatest years in the history of our country.”
After 15 minutes that message, relayed in an acceptance speech for his party’s nomination, had frayed at the edges and Trump returned to his usual style, berating the press and the Democrats. If anything, it was a sign that, though his third campaign for president is slicker and more organised than before, it has the same ideals at its core.
Nevertheless, Trump has a plan for his next act, a detailed one, written, directed and implemented by a staff which is far more organised, leak-proof and slick. It is a plan that, were Trump to win in November, would change not only America, but the role it plays in the world.
I’ve spoken to dozens of advisers, consultants, delegates and congressmen over four days at the Republican national convention, and this is what Trump 2.0 looks like.
The first hour
They will move fast. Already, staff are working at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida club, to draft executive orders which can be implemented on the first day of the new Trump administration.
“I’m telling you, it’s 24/7 now,” said one person within Trump’s wider circle. “We’ve got to be ready on the first hour. We’ve got to be ready to go.”
In the convention corridor, the former house speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Trump ally, said that the Trump campaign was smarter and more streamlined than before.
“He knows the job now, he’s more focused, more disciplined,” he said. “I think he’s better prepared. I don’t think that he has many policy differences from the time before, I think he’ll try to finish some things that didn’t get done.”
Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who is now in jail, put it differently to Time magazine: “He’s in full war mode.”
Purging the ‘deep state’
“Revenge,” Trump once told the television host Dr Phil, “can be justified”.
In a plea for unity at the convention, Trump said he is “running to be president for all of America, not half of America”.
Yet he has made clear that a priority in his second term would be to root out enemies that he believed stopped him from achieving his agenda during his first term, including those Trump sees as complicit in attempts to impeach him, or remove him from power.
Kash Patel, who is a frontrunner to become national security adviser, a vital role, said on a podcast last year that: “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but the media … we’re going to come after you whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out.”
Government employees, including judges and prosecutors, who do not align with Trump’s aims are already painted by Republicans as “deep state” actors, working against his and America’s interests. In a second term, they could be fired and entire government departments disbanded. Department of Justice funding would be cut, along with many climate regulations.
“In a second term I think he’s much more cognisant of a permanent bureaucrat state, [an] administrative state elected by no one, that undermined his first presidency, both in the foreign and domestic policy areas,” Roger Stone, one of Trump’s advisers, told me in a dark wood-floored restaurant near the convention.
Donald Devine, the former director of the office of personnel management under Ronald Reagan and a consultant under the Trump administration, said the purge was “not some Nazi takeover”.
“You need more political control over the bureaucracy,” he said. “The only ones who are really upset about this is the public employees, union people. The problem in DC is, everyone in DC is either in the government or has a spouse in the government or cousins in there.”
Migrant deterrence
By 6pm on Wednesday night, red and blue signs had been laid out on the chairs of the delegates for them to wave. They read: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”.
In a second Trump administration, this would not be a slogan. With a sympathetic Congress, it could be reality. Trump has said he plans to do his utmost to round up and deport the 11-20 million people who live illegally in America, and who make up about half of the country’s agricultural workers.
Mark Morgan, a former commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection and a Trump ally, told me that the measures taken in the first term – secure the border, build a wall, deport people living in the United States illegally, and increase deterrence – would be reinstated “on steroids”.
They would pour funds into agencies to secure the border and boost the capacity of the asylum judges who assess cases in order to clear the backlog.
They would plan to boost vetting at the border, reinstitute the “remain in Mexico” program –where people were sent back over the border to await their asylum hearings – and end the practice of releasing migrants in the US after they’re apprehended at the border, known as “catch and release”.
Such efforts would require a vast amount of funding, yet Morgan says the aims are achievable.
“We have to send the message that if you come to our border, first of all, the front line of defence, we’re not letting you in,” he said. “If you get past us, you’re not staying.”
Taking on the cartels
Morgan also claimed the US would probably take the fight directly to the Mexican cartels, which run whole swathes of the country, particularly around the border.
The aim is to stop the deadly opioid fentanyl being imported over the border from Mexico: an aim close to the heart of millions of Americans whose lives have been affected by overdose deaths.
National security officials and former officials close to Trump say they are willing to send troops over the border, or to launch drone strikes on Mexican targets, with or without the permission of the Mexican government.
“We have to stop looking at Mexico as our true partners, because they’re not,” Morgan said. “And they haven’t been for a long time, because they simply have not had the political will or courage to do what they need to do to defeat the cartels, and they’re devastating our nation’s safety and national security.”
Ending the endless wars
“Listen, Donald J Trump makes deals,” one person who has advised the former president on foreign policy told me at the convention. “That’s it. That’s what he wants to do. He looks at Kim Jong-un and sees beach condos outside Pyongyang. He looks at Ukraine and says: I’ll call Putin and say, stop the war or I’ll double aid to Ukraine. And he’ll call Zelensky and say: stop the war or I cut all your aid.”
Throughout the conference, speakers called for an end to “endless wars” in Europe and the Middle East. Several foreign policy specialists close to Trump told me that this means they intend to cut funding to Ukraine and to withdraw the US forces that remain in Syria and Iraq. Israel, despite being in the Middle East, is exempt from this.
Elbridge Colby, a former senior Pentagon official who has been tipped for a major national security role, said the main current of the party was “a real rejection of the kind of foreign policy trajectory that has dominated the last, I would say, 30 years, 35 years”.
Colby is part of a wing of the party that believes that China could be on the cusp of invading Taiwan, and that the US should prepare to send troops and resources to defend it.
While Trump has in the past expressed ambivalence toward defending Taiwan, he and JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice-president, are hawkish towards China due to a belief that growth in the Chinese manufacturing industry and continued imports of goods to the US will create a prosperous middle class in Beijing and Shanghai at the cost of the American worker.
They believe in “America First”, by which they mean a repudiation of the neo-conservative era of George W Bush and his Iraq invasion, and the imposition of tariffs to cut imports and boost American manufacturing industries. And, of course, they mean to make Europe pay more for their defence.
“Look, they’re not going to pull out of NATO,” said a senior western diplomat in the US over afternoon drinks. “That’s not what they’re telling us. But we know we have to do more, they’ve made that very clear.”
On Friday, Trump said on his Truth Social account that he had a “very good call” with President Zelensky, in which Ukraine’s leader congratulated him on his nomination and condemned the “heinous assassination attempt” last Saturday.
No more Bidenomics
At a private event for mega-donors at the convention last week, a crowd dressed in gold-buttoned navy blazers drank pinot gris. They spoke about the “energy” that Vance had brought during his speech about a better deal for America’s workers.
From the convention stage an ominous voice boomed “nearly 70 per cent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck”.
The idea that “Bidenomics” has ruined the lives of ordinary Americans, and needs to be kicked out in favour of an economic policy that centres on American manufacturing, is one of the most popular and enduring of the Trump campaign. The head of the Teamsters union spoke at the conference, and Trump has promised tax breaks for workers, and wants energy costs to be slashed.
Yet the billionaires at the drinks reception are unfazed by his supposed pro-worker zeal. Trump has made clear to them that he is their best bet of escaping a tax hike under the Democrats.
“Better him than the radical left,” one donor told me.
Uncertainty on abortion
The former president has struggled with his stance on abortion, an area that the Democrats have decided to focus on in their campaign.
He has zigzagged from being pro-choice to saying he’d advocate for “punishment” for women who seek abortions (comments he later walked back on). A paper from the influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation named Project 2025 - recently advocated for a nationwide restriction on access to abortion pills, prompting fears that the Trump approach could harden.
For now the line is he would leave it to individual states to legislate rather than backing a national ban.
Evangelicals still revere Trump for filling the Supreme Court with conservative justices that allowed Roe v Wade, the landmark case which legalised abortion in 1973, to be overturned. Vance, who is a convert to Catholicism, told a radio interviewer that he supported a countrywide ban on abortion. A second Trump administration could open the door for some American women to be convicted for having an abortion out of state.
A party all about Trump
At about 2am on Friday, when the last afterparties were petering out, a group of Republican grandees hung around the bar of a five-star hotel, throwing back the dregs of their bourbon. They talked about how, despite the triumphalism at the convention, they needed to stay the course, not run away with themselves or get complacent.
But they also spoke about how the party had changed.
“You don’t f--king get it,” one donor told me. “You guys think that Republicans are guys like me, country club, low taxes. But this is not the party. It’s about him. It’s all him. Do I have to like it? No. But I prefer him to the other guy. And we’re getting with the f--king program.”
The convention was a four-day celebration of Donald J Trump. His power, his agenda, his party. Everything else is a distraction. The Republican Party is him, and him alone. The man who, last week, was a quarter-inch from death.
At 7pm on Thursday, Lorenzo Sewell, a young pastor from a black-majority church in Detroit, Michigan, asked: “Could it be that Jesus Christ spared him for such a time as this?” to a cheer that rose in a swell through the auditorium. “Could it be that the king of glory … spared him for such a time as this?”
The Sunday Times
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