The America First movement has taken root in Fort Worth
On the plus side: Their rodeo was sad and lame.
What should we make of the fact that Fort Worth has somehow become the de facto center of gravity for the America First movement?
That's a question I've been trying to answer since I attended the America First Rodeo & Concert at Cowtown Coliseum, a far-right political rally organized by the America First Policy Institute that commandeered the Stockyards back in April.
It’s not just the rodeo that’s been on my mind, though more on that in a minute. It's also the fact that Fort Worth recently hosted the America First Policy Institute’s annual policy summit, which brought authoritarian B-listers like former Trump administration official Linda McMahon and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to town.
Fun fact: The AFPI itself is headquartered right here in Cowtown. Although it has numerous staffers based in DC — the natural location for a think tank trying to influence federal policy — its official address, as listed on tax filings and on amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, puts the institute in a nondescript building not far from TCU and right down the street from Rogers Roundhouse, a trashy sports bar I’ve patronized many times. The institute’s president and CEO, Brooke Rollins, has an easy commute: She and her husband, an oil executive, own a 8,000 square foot mansion in the Park Hill neighborhood, just up the street from her office.
Obviously it’s not news that Tarrant County is a hotbed of reactionary politics. It’s true that Biden won here in 2020, yet I’ve seen little evidence that this reflects an actual leftward shift in our local politics, a rare point of agreement between myself and the Star-Telegram’s Editorial Board. If you need proof, just sign up for the unhinged firehose of homophobic and transphobic bile that is the Tarrant County GOP’s official email newsletter.
But the America First Policy Institute isn’t just a local political group. The institute — alongside its ideological rival, the Heritage Foundation — has given itself the task of drafting policies and vetting staffers for a potential second Trump administration. The Justice Network of Tarrant County recently highlighted Heritage’s so-called Project 2025, a blueprint for remaking the federal bureaucracy in the image of Trump-era conservatism, and the AFPI has a similar plan, its America First Transition Project.
I really don’t know whether headquartering this noxious political network here in Fort Worth was a product of strategy or convenience. Perhaps the AFPI’s founders noticed the high percentage of Jan. 6 defendants who call North Texas home and said “Yeah this looks swell.” Or maybe Rollins, the president and CEO, just really likes living here. She did tell the Dallas Morning News that other large U.S. cities could emulate Fort Worth.
“There is no doubt you can’t make America great again until you make big urban cities great again,” she told the newspaper. “Fort Worth isn’t perfect, but it is a model of good governance.”
What did she mean by this? It’s not entirely clear. But I do think it should concern anyone who would like to see Fort Worth and Tarrant County move in a progressive direction. Some of the worst political actors in the country see this as fertile ground for their movement and a safe space for their ideas. This is worrisome.
But let’s get back to the other important question, the one that made me decide to actually attend the rodeo and suffer for my readership: Can the America First movement stage a good rodeo? Or are they just grifters trying to capitalize on Fort Worth’s “modern west” aesthetic?
Unfortunately, I can’t definitively answer that. I showed up late and missed most of the actual, well, rodeo.
I wish I could tell you it was an arena full of frauds and hustlers who don’t know one end of a horse from the other. But I can’t honestly judge whether it was good or not, authentic or pandering, exciting or dull. What I can tell you is that I walked into a largely empty coliseum in time to watch the last competitor of the night lose to a bull named “Bad Intentions.” It seemed fitting.
The question of whether the rodeo was good or not ultimately didn’t seem to matter. It quickly became clear that the cowboys were only an opening act for the main event: Trotting out a series of former Trump administration officials, failed Trump challengers, current Trump sycophants, and the recently embalmed corpse of Lou Holtz. And as the tagline for Holtz’s nearly inaudible speech — “Coaching America Back To Greatness” — suggests, the main event was a Trump rally in all but name.
The organizers might object to that characterization. The AFPI is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, which means it’s legally barred from endorsing political candidates. “We won’t be saying ‘Vote for so and so,’” Rollins told the Dallas Morning News for its preview of the event. And it’s true that I didn’t hear Rollins or anyone else say the exact words “Vote for Donald Trump.” But only credulous rubes could walk away from the rally thinking there was any other option.
Consider what was actually said:
Kellyanne Conway, who wore a sparkling pink cowboy hat, told the audience that: “We literally can’t afford four more years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Let’s give it up for Donald Trump!”
Vivek Ramaswamy, who did not wear a cowboy hat, told the audience that there is a cultural war raging in America and only one man can win it: “We need a commander-in-chief who’s going to lead us to victory in that war, and in the year 2024 that man is going to be Donald J. Trump, the 47th President of the United States of America.”
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a candidate who dropped out of the Republican Presidential primary before anyone realized he was running, went with a confusing rodeo metaphor: “I hope we’re all here because there’s one person who’s in the arena getting more attacks than anyone else. And he’s the person who’s going to turn around all the policies of Joe Biden and that’s Donald J. Trump. He’s in the arena for all of us.”
And midway through the rally, Rollins tossed a tantalizing little glob of red meat to anyone who was bored and thinking of leaving early: “There is a rumor that a former president may be calling in — but I don’t know! I don’t know. Stay tuned, stay tuned.” (Did he? Stay tuned, reader.)
What struck me more than anything, while listening to speaker after speaker, was that even though the America First Policy Institute promises its agenda will result in a “better and brighter future” for the country, the actual substance of its politics is a combination of grievance, scapegoating of perceived enemies, and retribution for imagined wrongs. This is the far-right’s most consistent political strategy in the age of Trump, and all the usual targets were name-checked: immigrants, “the deep state,” and of course trans and non-binary people. (The line that consistently got the most applause — and the one that multiple speakers returned to again and again — was some form of “there only two genders.”)
America First is, in other words, a vision of the country as a walled garden bristling with spikes and patrolled by killer drones, its protections and comforts accessible only by a privileged, resentful few. America First is about putting a particular kind of Americans first, at the expense of everyone else.
But despite it all, I actually walked away from the America First rodeo with a small measure of hope — if not for the United States, then at least for Fort Worth. That’s because the Trump-rally-in-all-but-name felt almost uniformly deflated, rushed and uninspired.
It’s true, I’m not an objective observer. But the turnout was shockingly low. Despite claims that the event was “sold out,” at least half the seats were empty and at no point did the crowd seem truly engaged or energized. When staff opened the floor of the arena so the audience could get close to the stage, almost no one bothered.
It wasn’t until near the end that I understood how deeply sad and pathetic the whole ordeal was. I thought back to the bribe Rollins had dangled in front of the MAGA audience: The half-promise that maybe perhaps just maybe Trump would be calling in. And in a sudden flash of unpleasant and unwelcome self-awareness, I realized that I, like everyone around me, was still hanging around because I wanted to see if he really would. Sure, I was there with the intention of writing critically about it, of gauging the crowd’s reaction for purposes of this newsletter. But that didn’t change the fact that I was still there in my seat, waiting on Trump.
So who knows if he actually called in? I don’t.
I left early instead.
A PSA from our marketing department:
I don’t need more reasons to feel sad but yesterday I stumbled across a Substack that churns out absolute bottom-feeder swill and has an ungodly number of subscribers compared to Lost in Panther City and it made me feel a little sad. So if you appreciate my writing (which takes quite a bit of unpaid time to plan, research, fact-check and edit) and want to improve my mental well-being, please help me get the word out about Lost in Panther City:
A dispatch from Lost in Panther City’s squirrel bureau:
Today’s squirrel comes to you courtesy of a reader in Euless. Did you know that you too could have one of your local Sciurus carolinensis featured in Lost in Panther City? Please send me any and all photos and if they don’t totally suck I might publish them.