At the beginning of his inaugural tackle 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 Motion Convention, 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 Era,” are on the market within the CPAC exhibition corridor. There, attendees decked out in different MAGA-themed clothes and accessories community and mingle. They go to cubicles with politically charged indicators that say “Defund Planned Parenthood” and accumulate brochures on matters like “The Gender Industrial Complex.”
One other sales space with a yellow and black striped backdrop resembling a jail cell’s bars was 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 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 exterior observers, claims of a golden age might sound odd.
Simply months in the past throughout the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, Trump stated that an American apocalypse was underway, pushed by a U.S. economic 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, silly and dangerous.
Additional, these critics contend, Trump’s unlawful energy grabs are resulting in a constitutional disaster that might trigger democracy to crumble within the U.S.
How, they marvel, might anybody imagine the nation is in a golden age?
As an anthropologist of U.S. political tradition, I’ve been learning the Make America Nice Once more, or MAGA, motion 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 explanation why the MAGA trustworthy imagine a golden age has begun. The listing begins, and ends, with Trump.
Elon Musk holds a portray of himself throughout CPAC in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Photos
1. The warrior hero
Trump supporters contend that after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assaults, which they take into account a “peaceful protest,” Trump turned a political pariah and sufferer.
Like many a mythic hero, Trump’s response was “never surrender.” In 2023, he repeatedly instructed his MAGA trustworthy, “I am your warrior, I am your justice.”
Trump’s heroism, his supporters imagine, was illustrated after a bullet grazed his ear throughout an assassination try in Pennsylvania in July 2024. Trump shortly rose to his toes, pumped his fist within the air and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight.”
The phrase turned 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 predominant 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 referred to as for him to run once more for president in 2028.
That is even though Trump working for a 3rd time period would violate the Structure.
2. A wrecking ball
The MAGA trustworthy imagine that Trump is sort of a human “wrecking ball,” as evangelical chief Lance Wallnau stated in 2015. This metaphor speaks to how Trump supporters imagine 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 govt orders.
One established the Division of Authorities Effectivity, or DOGE, which is dedicated to eliminating authorities waste. DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has dismantled USAID and fired 1000’s of presidency staff 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 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 requires a builder. Who higher, the MAGA trustworthy imagine, 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 notice 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 safe again,” “make America affordable and energy dominant again” and “bring back American values.”
These themes run via the remarks of virtually each CPAC speaker, who supply nonstop reward about how Trump is securing the nation’s borders, rising power independence, repatriating who they name unlawful aliens, restoring free speech and decreasing authorities regulation 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 utilizing the specter 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 concentrate on China.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson expressed the prevailing 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 Photos
American exceptionalism restored
The golden-age celebration at CPAC centered on Trump and his mission to “make America great again.”
Speaker after speaker, together with international conservative leaders from world wide, paid homage to Trump and this message.
Throughout her CPAC speech, Liz Truss, the previous prime minister of the U.Okay., said, “This is truly the golden age of America.” Truss, who doesn’t have a present political place, instructed the CPAC viewers that she needed to repeat the MAGA playbook with a view to “make Britain great again.”
The MAGA trustworthy imagine that Trump is restoring an period of American exceptionalism wherein the U.S. is an financial powerhouse, widespread sense is the rule, and conventional values centered on God, household and freedom are celebrated.
And so they imagine in a future the place the U.S. is, as Trump stated in his inaugural tackle, “the envy of every nation.”
