Extraordinary ‘normal’ Americans were the real stars of the RNC

The big names — like Donald Trump and veep nominee J.D. Vance — are devouring the headlines coming out of the Republican National Convention. 

Fair enough, but some of the other speeches from fascinating, non-marquee figures have been trenchant and powerful as they illuminate the forces driving Trump’s ascent.

Take Anne Fundner. 

The California mom’s son died in 2022 after taking pills laced with fentanyl — every parent’s nightmare. 

In her speech she directly called out the people responsible: “I hold Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the border czar — what a joke — and Gavin Newsom and every Democrat who supports open borders responsible for the death of my son.”

Her words cut to the heart of the matter. 

The Biden administration’s open-borders policy — instituted from Day 1 of Joe’s presidency — has supercharged America’s fentanyl crisis as drugs made from Chinese precursors by Mexican cartels stream across the border. 

(And Biden laughs off the issue, don’t forget.) 

Another righteously furious mother also blazed on the RNC stage: Madeline Brame. 

Brame has long been calling out the soft-on-crime leftists driving national, state and local policy among Dems. 

Her Army vet son was murdered by a foursome of monstrous thugs in New York in 2018. In 2022, criminal-loving Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg downgraded and dismissed charges against two of the killers (one of them is already free). 

Brame’s speech is a potent reminder that for all the pieties around “equity” and “justice” that animate leftist policymaking, the results are inequity and injustice, violent tragedies and the wider erosion of public order. 

The more and the more loudly Brame and others hurt by the left speak up, the better. 

Continuing the theme of those who lost children thanks to Biden, members of the Gold Star families of the 13 US service members killed during the president’s disastrous Afghanistan bugout took the stage. 

“Joe Biden has refused to recognize their sacrifice. Donald Trump knew all of our children’s names. He knew all of their stories,” thundered Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee.

The crowd answered with “Never forget!” And damn right. 

These stories are tragic, inarguable proof that at home and abroad President Biden has utterly failed his nation and violated his oath of office again and again and again. 

But they also demonstrate — in the words of another powerful speaker, WWII vet Bill Pekrul — that “America is still worth fighting for.” 

“People say America is an idea,” Pekrul went on. “But I believe America is much more than that. America is our home.”

That hopeful, optimistic spirit, with echoes of Ronald Reagan’s “happy warrior,” is at bottom what’s propelling the Trump campaign. 

A faith in America’s fundamental goodness and possibility, both long slandered by the left. 

It’s a political eternity until the election — but with a message like that, Trump’s rise is no wonder.