Firstly 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 gathered on the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, from Feb. 19-22 to have a good time the arrival of this golden age.
Gold glitter jackets, emblazoned with phrases like “Trump the Golden Period,” are on the market within the CPAC exhibition corridor. There, attendees decked out in different MAGA-themed clothes and niknaks community and mingle. They go to cubicles with politically charged indicators that say “Defund Deliberate Parenthood” and gather brochures on subjects like “The Gender Industrial Complicated.”
One other sales space with a yellow and black striped backdrop resembling a jail cell’s bars was known as a “Deportation Heart.” Attendees photographed themselves at this sales space, posing beside full-size cutouts of Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan.
Former Jan. 6 prisoners, including Proud Boys’ former leader Enrique Tarrio, have additionally been a visual – and controversial – presence at CPAC.
The convention’s proceedings kicked off on Feb. 20 with an Arizona pastor, Joshua Navarrete, saying, to loud applause, “We are living in the greatest time of our era – the golden age!”
Many subsequent audio system repeated this phrase, celebrating the nation’s “golden age.”
For a lot of outdoors observers, claims of a golden age may appear odd.
Simply months in the past through the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, Trump mentioned that an American apocalypse was underway, pushed by a U.S. financial system in shambles and main cities overrun by an “invasion” of “illegal alien” “terrorists,” “rapists” and “murderers.”
Now, Trump’s critics argue, the U.S. is led by a convicted felon who’s implementing insurance policies which are reckless, stupid and dangerous.
Additional, these critics contend, Trump’s illegal power grabs are resulting in a constitutional crisis that might trigger democracy to crumble within the U.S.
How, they marvel, might anybody consider the nation is in a golden age?
As an anthropologist of U.S. political culture, I’ve been studying the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement for years. I wrote a associated 2021 guide, “It Can Happen Here.” And I proceed to do MAGA analysis at locations like this yr’s CPAC, the place the temper has been giddy.
Listed here are three the reason why the MAGA trustworthy consider a golden age has begun. The record begins, and ends, with Trump.
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1. The warrior hero
Trump supporters contend that after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attacks, which they take into account a “peaceful protest,” Trump grew to become a political pariah and victim.
Like many a mythic hero, Trump’s response was “never surrender.” In 2023, he repeatedly informed his MAGA trustworthy, “I am your warrior, I am your justice.”
Trump’s heroism, his supporters consider, was illustrated after a bullet grazed his ear throughout an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July 2024. Trump rapidly rose to his ft, pumped his fist within the air and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight.”
The phrase grew to become a MAGA rally cry and, in February 2025, it has 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 phrase at a pre-CPAC occasion on Feb. 19.
When Bannon spoke on the CPAC important stage on Feb. 20, he led the gang in a raucous “fight, fight, fight” chant. He in contrast Trump with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and known as for him to run once more for president in 2028.
That is even supposing Trump working for a 3rd time period would violate the Constitution.
2. A wrecking ball
The MAGA trustworthy consider that Trump is sort of a human “wrecking ball,” as evangelical chief Lance Wallnau mentioned in 2015. This metaphor speaks to how Trump supporters consider the president is tearing down an entrenched, corrupt system.
The day Trump took workplace, MAGA stalwarts underscore, he started to “drain the swamp” with a slew of executive orders.
One established the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is dedicated to eliminating authorities waste. DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has dismantled USAID and fired hundreds of presidency employees whom MAGA views as a part of an anti-Trump “deep state.”
Musk stole the present at CPAC on Feb. 20. Chatting with a cheering crowd, Musk held up a big purple 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 “Purple Tape Reckoning,” “Crushing Woke Board Rooms” and “The Takedown of Left Tech.”
3. The Midas contact
A golden age requires a builder. Who higher, the MAGA trustworthy consider, than a billionaire businessman with a self-proclaimed “Midas touch.” This refers to King Midas, a determine in Greek mythology who turns every thing he touches into pure gold.
“Trump Will Fix It” indicators stuffed his 2024 marketing campaign rallies. And MAGA supporters observe that Trump started fixing the nation on Day 1 by “flooding the zone” with govt orders geared toward implementing his four-pronged “America First” promise. Along with draining the swamp, this plan pledges to “make America secure once more,” “make America inexpensive and vitality dominant once more” and “convey again American values.”
These themes run by means of the remarks of virtually each CPAC speaker, who provide nonstop reward about how Trump is securing the nation’s borders, rising vitality independence, repatriating who they name unlawful aliens, restoring free speech and lowering authorities regulation and waste.
CPAC audio system mentioned that Trump has already racked up a slew of successes only a month into his presidency.
This contains Trump utilizing the threat of tariffs to convey different nations to the negotiating desk.
In the meantime, Trump supporters are happy that he has been working to chop offers to finish the battle in Gaza and the warfare between Russia and Ukraine, whereas reorienting U.S. international coverage to focus on China.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson expressed the prevailing MAGA sentiment when he acknowledged at CPAC that Trump “wrote the art of the deal. He knows what he’s doing.”
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American exceptionalism restored
The golden-age celebration at CPAC centered on Trump and his mission to “make America nice once more.”
Speaker after speaker, together with international conservative leaders from around the globe, paid homage to Trump and this message.
Throughout her CPAC speech, Liz Truss, the previous prime minister of the U.Ok., acknowledged, “This is truly the golden age of America.” Truss, who does not have a current political position, informed the CPAC viewers that she wished to copy the MAGA playbook in an effort to “make Britain great again.”
The MAGA trustworthy consider that Trump is restoring an period of American exceptionalism by which the U.S. is an financial powerhouse, common sense is the rule, and conventional values centered on God, household and freedom are celebrated.
They usually consider in a future the place the U.S. is, as Trump mentioned in his inaugural deal with, “the envy of every nation.”
