The MAGA speakers who preceded Donald Trump at his Las Vegas rally evoked religious language to describe their leader. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene compared Trump to Jesus, saying that the messiah was also “a convicted felon.”
“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about ‘President Trump is a convicted felon,'” the congresswoman told the crowd. “Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon. And he was murdered on a Roman cross.”
This isn’t Greene’s first time saying Trump is just like Jesus. On the day of Trump’s New York arrest in April 2023, Greene told Right Side Broadcasting Network, “Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.”
She continued, “There have been many people throughout history that have been arrested and persecuted by radical, corrupt governments, and it’s beginning today in New York City. I just can’t believe it’s happening, but I’ll always support him. He’s done nothing wrong.”
Another speaker at Trump’s Vegas rally, Nevada Republican Party Chair Michael McDonald, likened Trump to God. “What more can be said than, thank God we’re here in Sunset Park to worship and bring back the greatest president we’ve ever known in our generation.”
Attendees at the rally will need a miracle if they want to keep cool. Las Vegas temperatures are expected to exceed 100 degrees on Sunday, and many rally seats appear to be in areas with little to no shade. Rally organizers are handing out water bottles as attendees wait in line to help prevent dehydration. The campaign told The Washington Post that “ample medical staff will be present.” They added that “limited tent space with shade and air conditioning” will be available “on a first-come, first-served basis.”
According to Climate Central, human-caused climate change is responsible for the recent unusually warm temperatures in the southwest United States. Trump, however, has repeatedly denied the impact of climate change.
When Trump spoke in Phoenix last Thursday, temperatures reached 110 degrees in the city, and 11 people were transported to the hospital with heat exhaustion, according to fire department officials.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.