Election Night Exclusives: A Look Back at the RNC with SCREEN’s Dan Patton

Presidential conventions are where candidates go to fuel up on popularity before completing the final leg of the race to the White House. Luxurious pitstops they are, with enough gas to drive an engine that runs every four years. 

I visited the Republican National Convention in July with filmmaker Brian Schodorf and photographer Ed Kearns. Our goal was to capture the energy of the campaign at the ground level. We did this by asking everyone’s opinion and not challenging any of the responses. A zero-resistance marketing survey, if you will. 

THE PERIMETER
The RNC took place inside a 350-acre section of downtown Milwaukee. It was surrounded by chain link fences, security vehicles and armed law enforcement teams. Secret Service and Homeland Security walked the beat alongside sheriffs, deputies and police from New Jersey, Oregon, Texas… everywhere. They were helpful and friendly, but the Secret Service does not do small talk.

On tables lining sidewalks outside “the perimeter,” vendors sold Trump t-shirts and hats. Mugshot images and bedazzled MAGA designs were very popular. This is where we met a man named Duane Schwingel, a charismatic GOP supporter who looked like Uncle Sam, dressed like Uncle Sam and called himself Uncle Sam. 

THE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY
Schwingel was among a handful of attendees dressed in vintage Americana couture, including several wearing Colonial regalia. Equipped with a harmonica, microphone and portable PA system, he entertained passersby with songs like Facebook Prison Blues, an original composition set to the music of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. Like many of the vendors, he also followed Trump events around the country.

“My supporters, they give me five, ten bucks here and there, and I got a Planet Fitness membership, so I shower every day at Planet Fitness, very nicely, and then I sleep in my vehicle and I’ll Door Dash every day if that’s what it takes,” he said. 

Shwingel believes that 75% of the country will vote for President Trump, including “many Democrats” who have confided in him. Still, he doesn’t believe that a President Trump would unify the nation.

“Never will everyone be on the same page,” he said. “That’s the nature of Democracy. There’s always going to be a percentage people who are uninformed, or mislead, or satanic, who just don’t see the truth.” 

SCREEN AT THE RNC

https://youtu.be/rY_qtxYLPNI

Screen at the RNC: comparing official messages and personal opinions to figure out what everyone’s thinking. (direction, camera, editing: Brian Schodorf; cover photo: Ed Kearns; music: Dan Patton).

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
Points of entry into the convention resembled gates in an airport — metal detectors, conveyor belts, the whole bit. One of them was located in the Hyatt Regency, which served as a vestibule between public space and private event. The hotel bustled with attendees, press, politicians and armed guards throughout the week. On the first day of the convention, a UW Stevens Point student named Allison Wisinski earned a round of applause by spontaneously belting out the National Anthem in the lobby. Afterwards, she told Screen that immigration was the most important election issue to her.

“We have mass immigration with people with not really good intentions,” she said. “Even in my hometown … there will be men who are illegal immigrants and they’ll come grab at you for no apparent reason … as a woman, it’s scary out there.”

Wisinski came to Milwaukee with Rejani Raveendran, a fellow Wisconsinite and single mother of three who is running for the US Senate. Raveendran immigrated to the US from India and earned her citizenship while enduring spousal abuse and homelessness. Now she is concerned about border security. “If we, as Americans, lose the idea of citizenship, we won’t have a country anymore,” she said.   

THE CONVENTION FEST
People entered the convention by walking through an elevated pathway from the second floor of the Hyatt to the nearby Baird Center, a glass and steel structure measuring 1.3 million-square-feet. A row of tents forming an attraction called “Convention Fest” lined the street in front of the building. They included a booth selling fried cheese curds and a booth featuring a life-sized cardboard cutout of Donald Trump as Rambo. It was like a state fair in a trade show. A pink school bus anchored one end of the row. 

The bus was the centerpiece of an experiential initiative called, She Prays, She Votes. Sponsored by Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, it travels to key battleground states and comes with black magic markers for women to sign and write messages on the side. 

According to Executive Vice President Annabelle Rutledge, CWA advocates for “different issues that cut to the core of who American women are.” These include “the sanctity of life from conception to natural death … religious liberty for all people … parental rights over their kids’ education … and stand(ing) with Israel.” The organization also educates women on early voting deadlines and other election details. 

“The back of our bus says, ‘honk if you know what a woman is,’” she said. “We’re not even able to have a functioning society if we don’t know that men are men and women are women and that we have different purposes.” 

Moments later, CWA President Penny Young Nance led a prayer asking for the return of hostages held by Hamas — “I pray that Angel armies will surround every single one of them and keep them safe.” She also prayed for the Democratic and Republican candidates. 

This was not the only time a GOP supporter would invoke faith during the convention. 

THE GRANDMOTHER
Georgia delegate Janet Weaver “prayed and prayed” that Roe V Wade would be overturned. A grandmother of eight, she spent years standing in front of abortion clinics “to offer women help if they were feeling pressure to have an abortion.” But for a while, she could not tell a woman who was raped to carry her child because she felt it was “unfair.”

Then her mother told her about a 15-year-old who got pregnant after being assaulted by an abusive man. The woman “hated (carrying) the baby” but did not seek an abortion because “it was illegal.” As it turns out, Jan’s mother was the pregnant teen and Jan herself was the baby. “No person wanted me to be here, but God wanted me to be here,” she said.

Weaver believes that if voters “put down their fears” and “look at the facts,” they will see that Donald Trump is not an embodiment of doom. Case in point: “You could still get abortions in the United States of America.” 

THE SUPPORTERS
Steps away from our conversation, a group of young people queued up for the “Right Wing Revolution” party hosted by Turning Point Action, a 501(c)(4) organization that describes itself as “a force for the conservative movement.” Among them was Peter, a staffer from a Greater Chicago nonprofit, who said that “the cost of living, the economy and our safety” were the issues most important to him.

Peter and his friends were just a small part of a huge crowd in the plaza of the Fiserv Forum, where GOP speakers addressed roughly 17,500 well-dressed supporters every night from 5-10 p.m. With a trio of upscale bars, several cornhole courts and all kinds of patio furniture, the scene resembled a summer vacation. 

Faces in the crowd included Timothy O’Reilly, a California delegate, attorney and Chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County. He described the hysteria surrounding the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which begins with a 900-page Mandate for Leadership, as a misleading invention of the media. “The Heritage Foundation is a think tank,” he said. “There’s some good ideas in there. There’s some terrible ideas in there.” 

Idaho State Senator and delegate Tammy Nichols wore a red, white and blue “Make America Great Again” dress designed by Andre Soriano. She believes that “every state has a border crisis going on,” and that President Trump can solve not only this problem but also many other “kitchen table issues.” 

Senator Nichols’ friend Sara Brady wore a yellow dress embroidered with the words “Don’t Tread On Me” in an apparent homage to the Gadsden flag. After being arrested in Idaho for “taking my children to a playground during COVID,” she said that the weaponization of the judicial system is her “top issue” in the election.  

Chicagoan Jerome Israelov is a retired wheat trader and “big” Trump supporter who came to the convention with his wife, an alternate delegate. “I can’t talk politics with people in Chicago,” he said. “I’m outvoted and I’m outnumbered and I accept that.” But if they would just listen, he would tell them, among other things, that Democrats have “abandoned” their supporters in the inner city.

“We’ve closed schools in Chicago to house migrants,” he said. “We’ve closed community centers. We’ve closed parks in the poorest areas of Chicago. Why? To bring in and house migrants. To give them money. To give them free health care.” 

Fellow Chicagoan P Rae Easley would probably agree. She is the Founder of Chicago Red, an organization “committed to liberating people from the plantation of liberal failure that is bankrupting the city and leaving Americans behind.” In her opinion, Democrats have “never liked Black people” and they govern by “following the script they were given in the 1800s.” To counter the harm that they cause, Chicago Red is “hosting Trump rallies all around the city,” including one in the Austin neighborhood where P Rae resides.

THE FORUM
The seasoned politicians and ordinary Americans who addressed attendees inside the Fiserv Forum reinforced many of these opinions. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told the crowd, “We’re now in the midst of a struggle between two completely different visions of who we are as Americans.” Hulk Hogan ripped off his t-shirt while shouting, “Trump-a-mania, make America great again!” California mother Anne Fundner explained how the Democrats caused the death of her son, Weston, by supporting “open border” policies that allowed fentanyl to enter the country. 

Musical interludes whipped up the crowd in between speeches. They included rock and roll cover bands and, at one point, the song Trump Trump Baby, a knock off of Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby by self-described “MAGA-rapper Pro-Trumper” Forgiato Blow, who was in the stands. “We need some people out here making people happy again,” he said “The idea behind the song was to let everybody know to vote November 5^th.” Since then, the Queen-inspired bassline that originally landed Vanilla Ice in trouble has been removed from the song in response to a Sony Music copyright claim.

Donald Trump watched the proceedings from a reserved section in the upper level of the stands. It had a Caesar kind of vibe. On the fourth and final day, he closed the convention with an hour-and-a-half address to the crowd. He mentioned several GOP talking points, and maybe stretched a few, but otherwise stayed away from outrageous accusations and categorical insults. He bookended the speech with references to faith. Perhaps he had heard some advice about playing it cool.

The mood of the people reflected this somewhat laid-back confidence. Other than a protest outside the perimeter on the first day, most attendees acted with uplifting positivity. 

THE BRIGHT SIDE
Israelov wondered how the Democrats could compete with all the joy, especially when it was underscored by the “stories” and “compassion” of the speakers. “I can’t imagine who the Democrats are going to put on that stage,” he said. “The country is so fed up with the status quo and the direction that we’re going that anyone, any Republican, any trained circus animal, could beat whoever it is that the Democrats are going to put up.”  

The comment was offered without arrogance or sarcasm. At the time, polls showed former President Trump leading presumptive Democratic nominee President Biden by as much as 11 points — a guaranteed victory in everyone’s mind — so it came off as nothing more than a casual observation. 

Three days later, President Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic Nominee. Today, she is ahead of President Trump in the polls. 

We’ll be reporting from the Democratic National Convention on Monday.