The 2016 Republican convention let extremists in. In 2024, they took the stage

From JD Vance to Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican party put radical figures front and center

In Cleveland, Ohio, in 2016, Donald Trump received the Republican presidential nomination as the leader of a successful political insurgency against the party elites, and far-right extremists the party had once tried to ostracize crossed the convention's threshold for the first time.

Along with the likes of the far-right media figures Alex Jones, VDare's Peter Brimelow, and Milo Yiannopoulos, the white nationalist Richard Spencer was a prominent attendee that year, and he told the Washington Post that he and other extremists had enjoyed one big, bourbon-fueled party" in unofficial side venues around the convention center.