RNC's 'same page' convention opens with a fake Epstein-files redirect and half its headliners missing.

As it ran on the front

Republicans arrived in Dallas this week for what the RNC calls the party's first-ever midterm convention, and the pitch, laid out by Washington Examiner reporter Ramsey Touchberry, was simple: this is the event that gets everyone "on the same page." Two days, one arena, President Trump giving the keynote to close night one after moving himself onto the schedule by Truth Social post, promising "the Greatest RALLY of them all." Organizers spent the last week before doors opened still working the phones to offload unsold seats. That's the pitch, and it holds up right until Sept. 4, five days before the same-page speech, when a site calling itself "2026 RNC Midterm Convention" — gopdallas2026.com — started sending visitors who clicked through not to a schedule but to the Department of Justice's page for the Jeffrey Epstein files. The site wasn't the RNC's. It was posing as the RNC's, which is worse, because nobody had to write that joke — the URL already knew where to point people. Call it a prankster with a domain name. Sure. Fine. It doesn't explain why the redirect went there and not somewhere else.

Then there's the roster. Attorney General Todd Blanche is speaking — a decision former Attorney General Eric Holder called "unprecedented" and "disgraceful" — the sitting head of the same DOJ whose Epstein files page the fake site rerouted to, at the podium the RNC is billing as unifying. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is not speaking; he was left off the keynote list his own party released. Sen. Susan Collins isn't attending at all — "it's long been her practice," a source told the Examiner, which is a polite way of saying she checked the invitation and passed. The Hill and CBS both filed stories this week on the battleground candidates skipping it entirely, two months before an election where Republicans are defending the House. So the convention still gets everyone on the same page — except the majority leader, who wasn't asked to say so, and the senator who wasn't there to hear it, and that's not a fracture, that's just scheduling. Two of the party's most senior members had somewhere else to be during their own unity rally.…