MILWAUKEE — Donald Trump’s “big tent” convention includes the ringleader of the right’s most notorious circus. Rolling Stone ran into Clay Clark, the organizer of the conspiratorial, Christian nationalist road show known as ReAwaken America Tour, eating lunch near the security perimeter for the RNC convention.
Clark — whose roving road show has platformed pardoned-felon Michael Flynn, and hosted a variety of dubious christian “prophets” like Julie Green — has forged ties with the Trump family. Eric Trump has spoken on tour stops, and ReAwaken America even held an event at the Trump Doral resort in Miami, where things got weird, like demon mermaid weird.
The ReAwaken America roadshow has played a significant role in keeping the Trump base mobilized and active in the years since the 2020 election. For better or worse, few Americans have a better finger on the pulse of the often bizarre and baseless ideas and ideologies that motivate the ultra-MAGA set than Clark.
While most right-wingers in Milwaukee are sounding triumphant amid Trump’s many turns of good fortune, Clark is morbid. “I think I just watched the funeral for the Republican Party,” he says, reflecting on the RNC convention.
Clark, who hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, is deeply religious, and he’s angry that the GOP platform has stripped its usual boilerplate about limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, and softened, slightly, its language on abortion, which Clark describes as a move “away from a pro-life stance.” Clark turns serious: “I think we’re asking for judgment from God.”
The ReAwaken leader also believes that the GOP’s “unity” message is a dire mistake: “Jesus, in the Bible, says he didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword.” Clark says he is “pro-Jesus at all times,” and describes Christ an unpopular figure for “laying hands on the sick, and casting out devils and teaching the Word of God, which was a divisive idea.”
Clark is most troubled by Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential candidate. “J.D. Vance was made relevant through the endorsement and funding of Peter Thiel,” Clark says, referring to the Facebook investor and PayPal co-founder who brought Vance into his venture capital firm and later invested millions into Vance’s campaign for Senate.
For Clark, this is a problem that transcends money and politics. In Clark’s conspiratorial worldview, a nefarious group of “globalists” are involved in a dark plot to push what he describes as “a one-world government, the Great Reset, and transhumanism,” a scheme he says also includes “central bank digital currencies, surveillance under the skin, and RNAmodifying nanotechnology.”
Clark also believes that the secretive international Biderberg Group is a key player in the plot of the globalists. And he notes, conspiratorially, that Thiel is listed among the leadership of the organization. “Peter Thiel is part of the steering committee for the Bilderberg Group — and he’s the one steering J.D. Vance.” Feigning enthusiasm Clark adds: “It’s gonna be exciting to have Peter Thiel as Vice President.”
Clark also tells Rolling Stone he’s planning to wind down the ReAwaken tour. “I’ll do one, final one in October,” he says, “just so that people can learn about the Great Reset — and contrast that versus what I would call biblical worldviews.”
He’s had Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak on his tour, but don’t expect Clark to cast his ballot for the independent candidate in November. Despite his disappointment, he says he’s still riding the MAGA train, insisting: “I will vote for President Trump.”
