Opera, Faith and Western Civilization: Jim Pfaff with Christopher Macchio at the RNC Midterm Convention | Sep 10, 2026
Published: September 10, 2026
Network: TCC Live — RNC Midterm Convention coverage, Dallas
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff
An opera singer sang three songs on the second night of the 2026 RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas. The next day, at The Conservative Caucus booth overlooking the floor, Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff sat him down and asked what he hopes the platform accomplishes — and got an answer about the fight for Western civilization. The guest is Christopher Macchio — a singer Pfaff introduced as one of the most amazing male opera voices he has ever heard, and who did not give his surname on air. What followed on the September 10 broadcast from the TCC media suite was a conversation about the Pavarotti gold standard, President Trump’s ear for music, why a singer’s craft is a discipline before it is a talent, and what an artist owes a country.
Topics Covered
- The Pavarotti Gold Standard and the Voice as an Instrument
- A President With the Playlist
- Music and the Fight for Western Civilization
- Why the Discipline Is the Point
- From Performing Arts Centers to the RNC Midterm Convention
- Key Takeaways
The Pavarotti Gold Standard and the Voice as an Instrument
Pfaff opened by naming the measuring stick. Everyone knows Pavarotti, he said, and among a long list of amazing tenors Pavarotti is the gold standard — so explain to people what the difference actually is. Pfaff added his own qualification: he is no musician, but he was serious about music for part of his life, and his ear is strong enough to hear the gap.
“Pavarotti had a special quality, a special ring to the voice. And so I try to move ever so close in that direction.”
— Christopher Macchio, tenor, RNC Midterm Convention
Chris does not treat that as a matter of talent. The voice is an instrument, and unlike a piano it cannot be set once and left alone. You have to get plenty of sleep, he said — something he has not been able to achieve in the last couple of months and hopes to return to after the election — and he has never done any drugs or alcohol. Healthy living is part of the craft, not a side note to it.
The Last Five Percent
Chris puts himself at 95% of the way to the Pavarotti standard. “That extra 5%, that’s the worst part. That’s the hardest part.” He has studied long enough that singing is the easy part now, and he is still studying every day. Pfaff’s reply: it is not Pavarotti, but it approaches — and that is why the President chose him.
Pfaff pushed the instrument comparison further. Other instruments can be adjusted, and adjusted very precisely; the voice requires more than mere adjustment. You do not need a tension of effort to make a piano be in tune — you tune it. Singing is not like that, which is why he respects the discipline, and why he called it the beauty of America that the country has been excellent that way.
A President With the Playlist
Chris traced his connection to President Trump back to Pavarotti. The President was a fan, he said, and had Pavarotti perform — at the Taj Mahal, he thought; Trump told him Pavarotti was the first performer to get $1 million for one night. Trump is now a fan of Chris’s, which Chris said he is grateful for.
The taste is wide and deep, Pfaff said, and Chris filled in the detail: an iPad Pro with a playlist the President is not afraid to use, the classics, Bocelli, classic rock, and the occasional collision of genres — Pavarotti and James Brown doing “It’s a Man’s World.”
“So it’s really great to now be a part of the Trump family and President Trump’s appreciation for music. It’s played such a critical role in defining the soundscape of what he’s been trying to do in his public life, and particularly during these two administrations.”
— Christopher Macchio, tenor, RNC Midterm Convention
Pfaff’s point was that a convention program is not a man walking up and riffing on a speech. The whole thing has to be orchestrated, and the President knows it: he lives in the city with two of the greatest halls in the world, the Metropolitan Opera House and Carnegie Hall, both with the acoustics to prove it. Chris’s Carnegie debut, with a standing ovation from the crowd, was one of the critical moments of his career.
That attention runs down to the stage direction. Chris said the President will give him instructions in the middle of a live telecast — the boss wants this, so that is what he is going to get — and the adjustment gets made in real time. He described the same habit in the building: the President makes sure the veining in the marble lines up in the lobby going into the West Wing, and showed Chris the plans in the Oval Office for the new ballroom. No other president noticed detail like that, Chris said. He also said the best ballroom of them all is still the one at Mar-a-Lago.
“He wants people to feel the greatness of America in each and everything that he does. And I think he really has been quite successful in that regard.”
— Christopher Macchio, tenor, RNC Midterm Convention
Music and the Fight for Western Civilization
Pfaff asked the question the interview was built toward: now that the President has put him in this place, what does Chris hope it accomplishes, beyond the professional milestone? Chris answered in two parts. First, the immediate one — to play his small, humble role in the furtherance of the President’s agenda, which he called the country’s agenda. Then the larger one.
“What I hope to accomplish as an artist in the bigger picture is to be a part, a musical component of that American Renaissance, of a resurgence of a more elevated sensibility in our culture that can make people feel that being human is a special, noble thing, as opposed to something in the opposite direction that we’ve seen far too often in mainstream culture these days.”
— Christopher Macchio, tenor, RNC Midterm Convention
That is a claim about what art is for. Chris named the mechanism: the elevated arts remind people how special and noble, and holy and sacred, it is to be human. Take that anchor out and the crassness fills the space. It is the same argument TCC has made about the religious turn in American public life — see our coverage of the faith revival under President Trump — applied to the concert hall instead of the pulpit.
Chris put the stakes in civilizational terms. The awareness he wants to build is not of his own career but of a cultural inheritance, and he said plainly what he believes that inheritance is up against.
“Because of President Trump, I have the opportunity to be heard by so many more millions of people and have an impact, not just on my own career, but on their awareness of what our cultural legacy in Western civilization that we are so, so, so much fighting for right now. Fighting for the preservation and the restoration of our Western civilization. And this is the musical component of that.”
— Christopher Macchio, tenor, RNC Midterm Convention
He named both jobs — preservation and restoration — and said the musical component is his part of it. If he can remind people around the country of that legacy, he said, then he has done something worthwhile and meaningful, and he is grateful for the platform to reach folks in that regard.
Why the Discipline Is the Point
Pfaff located the crassness in the entertainment culture in a missing anchor in the fine arts of music, and ran through the register he knows: Wagner is brash, Beethoven is brutish, Strauss is beautiful, Tchaikovsky is brilliant. Most people are not aware of that range, he said, or of what it has to do with the human spirit and with the performing art itself — how you approach the pieces, how you learn to duplicate them, what happens when you become a composer yourself. Then he drew the line he wanted on the record.
“It’s not so much because opera music or classical music is inherently better than any other form of music. It’s because the discipline itself requires the kind of excellence that we want in the culture.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Chris agreed with the framing and sharpened it. It is not that one genre is better than another, he said, but the classical genre requires the most discipline and refinement, and it is the most dense distillation. Opera singing is the purest form of the human body creating a vocalized sound. Just as ballet is the foundation for kinesthetics and movement and dance, opera is the biological foundation of any other form of singing derived from it — so a singer who can pull off a great opera performance is well on the way to slipping into any other genre.
The purpose of the technique is not the technique. At the end of the day, Chris said, you want to connect with people and have the most emotional impact you can, and that is what he sets out to do each and every day. Pfaff answered that with the standard he applies to work generally.
“Excellence sought after and achieved is what makes life worth the living. Because God gives us this life to take what we’re doing and to make it perfect.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
From Performing Arts Centers to the RNC Midterm Convention
The practical change in Chris’s career is a change of scale. He was already performing in performing arts centers around the country, he said, but he was not a household name. The President’s platform is what moved the number of people who can hear him from a hall to millions — which is why he treats the behind-the-scenes work, the part he called much more taxing than the singing, as a necessary part of the equation.
Pfaff, who was hearing him live for the first time at the convention, said Chris has one of the best deliveries of anyone in the discipline he has heard, and he has heard Pavarotti and can tell the difference. He also mentioned an earlier interview: he had asked Lee Greenwood whether he was jealous that Chris got three songs at the convention and Greenwood only got one. Chris’s answer was that he is jealous of the royalty checks, not the set list — he is not making the mailbox money Lee is, God bless him.
Pfaff’s response was about what the President rewards. With Trump it is about what was done, not just the money count, and that is why he relates to people — he wants the thing to be great, and that is why he chose Chris to sing. The booth interview was part of TCC’s week of broadcasts from the media suite in Dallas — see our coverage of the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.
Chris said the President’s platform is why any of this reaches past his own career, and that he is grateful for it. Pfaff closed the segment by praying the Lord’s blessing on Chris’s work, thanking him for inspiring the people in the hall, and sending viewers back to the convention speeches.
Key Takeaways
- The gold standard is a working target, not a compliment – Chris puts himself at 95% of the way to Pavarotti’s “special ring to the voice,” and says the last 5% is the hardest part. He is still studying every day.
- The voice has to be lived for – Sleep, which he has not had in the last couple of months, and no drugs or alcohol, ever. Unlike a piano, the instrument cannot simply be tuned.
- Trump’s musical ear is part of the program – A Pavarotti fan who, Chris believes, had him perform at the Taj Mahal for what Trump told Chris was the first $1 million night, with an iPad Pro playlist running from Bocelli to classic rock, and stage instructions delivered in the middle of a live telecast.
- The goal is Western civilization, not a career – Chris wants to be the musical component of a resurgence, “fighting for the preservation and the restoration of our Western civilization,” and to remind people that the elevated arts show how noble it is to be human.
- Discipline, not genre, is the argument – Pfaff: classical music is not inherently better, but the discipline requires the kind of excellence the culture needs. Chris: opera is the biological foundation of every other form of singing derived from it.
- The platform changed the scale – Three songs at the RNC Midterm Convention, performing arts centers before it, and millions of listeners after — the reason Chris says the President’s backing matters for Western civilization and not just for him.
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The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.
Originally broadcast Sep 10, 2026 live from The Conservative Caucus media suite at the 2026 RNC Midterm Convention, Dallas.
Peter J. Thomas is a veteran conservative political strategist and seasoned policy expert dedicated to upholding the principles of the Constitution and democracy. As a founder and the chairman of the Conservative Caucus, he has played a pivotal role in promoting and shaping the conservative agenda across the nation for over half a century.