17 July—The picture below is of a fly (a housefly—Musca domestica, one of whose little legs is under a wing) and wasp (a yellow jacket—Vespula germanica) who met on the wall of a bar in Milwaukee on Sunday. The picture was taken by a barfly who preferred to remain anonymous. It just so happens that the executive committee of the Republican National Committee was plotting its strategy for this week’s GOP convention in that very bar when the insects landed on the wall.

In the spirit of non-violence, non-confrontation, and amity that virtually all politicians and commentators are touting while jerking their knees and crossing their fingers after the alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump Saturday night, Musca and Vespula got together à la Associated Press and Reuters to report on everything the executive committee did. Everything they considered worth reporting on, anyway.

They’ve given The Monitor the scoop because they appreciate our insect-friendly policy. (And Vespula doesn’t know we recently had to take out a yellow jacket nest for purely defensive reasons. But we did apologize to the innocent victims.)

As it happens, the only thing Musca and Vespula considered worth reporting on was the name change that passed the Republican National Committee’s executive committee unanimously on the first vote. No fun there. There was in fact some discussion about grammatical nuance (nouns and adjectives and articles), of course, but the name change for the party sailed through.

So Tomorrow night just before the RNC’s 2024 convention is adjourned, co-chair Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, will announce to the unmentionables that henceforth the Republican Party will be officially known as Trump. Not the Trumpian Party. Not the Trumpican Party. Not the Trumper Party. Not even the Trump Party. Just Trump.

Because, like it or not, that’s precisely what the Grand Old Party has become. Just Trump . . .