Originally of his inaugural deal with on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump declared, “The golden age of America begins right now!”
A month later, Trump’s supporters accumulated at the yearly Conservative Political Motion Convention, or CPAC, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, from Feb. 19-22 to have fun the arrival of this golden age.
Gold glitter jackets, emblazoned with words like “Trump the Golden Era,” are on the market within the CPAC exhibition corridor. There, attendees decked out in different MAGA-themed clothes and niknaks community and mingle. They consult with cubicles with politically charged indicators that say “Defund Planned Parenthood” and gather brochures on subjects like “The Gender Industrial Complex.”
Every other sales space with a yellow and black striped backdrop similar to a jail mobile’s bars used to be referred to as a “Deportation Center.” Attendees photographed themselves at this sales space, posing beside full-size cutouts of Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan.
Former Jan. 6 prisoners, together with Proud Boys’ former chief Enrique Tarrio, have additionally been a visual – and debatable – presence at CPAC.
The convention’s court cases kicked off on Feb. 20 with an Arizona pastor, Joshua Navarrete, pronouncing, to loud applause, “We are living in the greatest time of our era – the golden age!”
Many next audio system repeated this word, celebrating the rustic’s “golden age.”
For plenty of outdoor observers, claims of a golden age may appear extraordinary.
Simply months in the past all through the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, Trump stated that an American apocalypse used to be underway, pushed by way of a U.S. economic system in shambles and main towns overrun by way of an “invasion” of “illegal alien” “terrorists,” “rapists” and “murderers.”
Now, Trump’s critics argue, the U.S. is led by way of a convicted felon who’s imposing insurance policies which are reckless, silly and destructive.
Additional, those critics contend, Trump’s unlawful energy grabs are resulting in a constitutional disaster that would purpose democracy to fall apart within the U.S.
How, they surprise, may just any individual consider the rustic is in a golden age?
As an anthropologist of U.S. political tradition, I’ve been finding out the Make The us Nice Once more, or MAGA, motion for years. I wrote a comparable 2021 guide, “It Can Happen Here.” And I proceed to do MAGA analysis at puts like this yr’s CPAC, the place the temper has been giddy.
Listed here are 3 the reason why the MAGA devoted consider a golden age has begun. The listing starts, and ends, with Trump.
Elon Musk holds a portray of himself all through CPAC in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP by means of Getty Photographs
1. The warrior hero
Trump supporters contend that once the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assaults, which they believe a “peaceful protest,” Trump changed into a political pariah and sufferer.
Like many a mythic hero, Trump’s reaction used to be “never surrender.” In 2023, he many times instructed his MAGA devoted, “I am your warrior, I am your justice.”
Trump’s heroism, his supporters consider, used to be illustrated after a bullet grazed his ear all through an assassination try in Pennsylvania in July 2024. Trump temporarily rose to his toes, pumped his fist within the air and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight.”
The word changed into a MAGA rally cry and, in February 2025, it’s been stamped on CPAC attendees’ shirts and jackets.
After Trump’s 2024 election victory, many Trump supporters dubbed it
“the greatest comeback in political history.” MAGA populist Steven Bannon invoked this word at a pre-CPAC match on Feb. 19.
When Bannon spoke at the CPAC primary level on Feb. 20, he led the gang in a raucous “fight, fight, fight” chant. He in comparison Trump with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and referred to as for him to run once more for president in 2028.
That is even supposing Trump operating for a 3rd time period would violate the Charter.
2. A wrecking ball
The MAGA devoted consider that Trump is sort of a human “wrecking ball,” as evangelical chief Lance Wallnau stated in 2015. This metaphor speaks to how Trump supporters consider the president is tearing down an entrenched, corrupt gadget.
The day Trump took place of job, MAGA stalwarts underscore, he started to “drain the swamp” with a slew of government orders.
One established the Division of Executive Potency, or DOGE, which is dedicated to getting rid of govt waste. DOGE, led by way of billionaire Elon Musk, has dismantled USAID and fired hundreds of presidency employees whom MAGA perspectives as a part of an anti-Trump “deep state.”
Musk stole the display at CPAC on Feb. 20. Chatting with a cheering crowd, Musk held up a big crimson chain noticed and yelled, “This is the chain saw for bureaucracy.”
Speaker after speaker at this yr’s CPAC have celebrated this and different wrecking-ball achievements on panels with titles like “Red Tape Reckoning,” “Crushing Woke Board Rooms” and “The Takedown of Left Tech.”
3. The Midas contact
A golden age calls for a builder. Who higher, the MAGA devoted consider, than a billionaire businessman with a self-proclaimed “Midas touch.” This refers to King Midas, a determine in Greek mythology who turns the whole lot he touches into 24-karat gold.
“Trump Will Fix It” indicators stuffed his 2024 marketing campaign rallies. And MAGA supporters word that Trump started solving the rustic on Day 1 by way of “flooding the zone” with government orders aimed toward imposing his four-pronged “America First” promise. Along with draining the swamp, this plan pledges to “make America safe again,” “make America affordable and energy dominant again” and “bring back American values.”
Those topics run throughout the remarks of virtually each and every CPAC speaker, who be offering nonstop reward about how Trump is securing the rustic’s borders, expanding power independence, repatriating who they name unlawful extraterrestrial beings, restoring unfastened speech and lowering govt legislation and waste.
CPAC audio system stated that Trump has already racked up a slew of successes only a month into his presidency.
This contains Trump the usage of the specter of price lists to convey different nations to the negotiating desk.
In the meantime, Trump supporters are happy that he has been operating to chop offers to finish the warfare in Gaza and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, whilst reorienting U.S. overseas coverage to concentrate on China.
Area Speaker Mike Johnson expressed the present MAGA sentiment when he said at CPAC that Trump “wrote the art of the deal. He knows what he’s doing.”
CPAC attendees put on Trump-themed clothes on the four-day political convention on Feb. 20, 2025.
Andrew Harnick/Getty Photographs
American exceptionalism restored
The golden-age birthday celebration at CPAC targeted on Trump and his venture to “make America great again.”
Speaker after speaker, together with overseas conservative leaders from all over the world, paid homage to Trump and this message.
All through her CPAC speech, Liz Truss, the previous high minister of the U.Okay., said, “This is truly the golden age of America.” Truss, who does now not have a present political place, instructed the CPAC target audience that she sought after to duplicate the MAGA playbook so as to “make Britain great again.”
The MAGA devoted consider that Trump is restoring an technology of American exceptionalism during which the U.S. is an financial powerhouse, not unusual sense is the rule of thumb, and standard values targeted on God, circle of relatives and freedom are celebrated.
They usually consider in a long term the place the U.S. is, as Trump stated in his inaugural deal with, “the envy of every nation.”
