A Trump rally is a sensual assault that hijacks your soul.
The arena is bare, spare, undecorated. The lights are hyperbright; it is a place without shadows. Slim pendants of speakers dangle from the ceiling. The stage is a square floating on the floor about one-fourth of the way from one end, raised about three feet, and connected by a narrow walkway to an entrance, swathed in the deep royal blue of Trump’s suits, from which the president will emerge. On the stage stands a lectern flanked by two teleprompters. The stage’s base is swathed in red, white, and blue bunting. It is theater in the round. The president is a main character, but so are we, each of us in the crowd.
Directly opposite the stage rises the press corral, a fenced, bleacher-like stairway crowded with cameras and cameramen; the journalists themselves working at long tables at its base and behind. They are there by design, not just because of the sight lines. They are the Greek Chorus. Trump’s foil. A collection of Shakespearean fools wearing ass’s ears, to be laughed at, humiliated, jeered.
The entrance and the perimeter hallways are thick with black-uniformed Secret Service officers in bulletproof vests, and within the vicinity of the president himself are agents in dark suits. The campaign has no control over what they wear, what they look like. But that’s not true of the private security detail, an important stage prop: an army of cartoonishly large and muscled young men—and a very few women—in black cargo pants, tight gray polo shirts, and black boots. Some sport mohawks, some shaved heads. They are giants, many over six feet tall; to stand next to one is to feel tiny. I thought of Nazi propogandist Albert Speer’s emphasis on monumentality and over-dimensioning and his insistence on the open display of athletic-looking men in uniforms. And I remembered a term for oppression: to be “under boots.”
In that bright, loud arena I quickly felt lost, struck by a surprising loneliness, as the crowd grew denser and more united, as it grew into a thing, a single body to which I did not belong. A body that as the hours ticked by grew ever more restless, subject to bursts of chanting, “USA! USA! USA!” or simply “TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!”
Michael Jackson belted out “Beat It” and stadium waves erupted; round and round the arena people rose section by section, lifting their red, white, and blue signs, uniform in size and shape, which had been handed out by the campaign. (All outside signs and placards are banned.)
“Kamala Harris?” I heard the man behind me say, “Hypocrite. People like her make me sick.”
“I just love what he’s done for our economy,” said Debbie, sitting next to me. She was wearing a Tommy Hilfiger blouse and blue jeans, and she and her friend Ellie lived a hundred miles south in the town of White Lake. Debbie herself was on disability, though she was against government handouts. “My whole family used to be Democrats and we’ve all switched. I lived for eight years in Indiana and after the GM plant there closed, so did everything else. The drug problem got intense. Meth. Parents sending their kids out in the winter without coats, it was so sad. I watch a lot of news—CNN and Fox every morning with my coffee.”
I asked about Ukraine, and she said, “Well, I just don’t believe it. I mean it seems like the Democrats just dug it up for the election. I mean he’s the president of the U.S. and he should be able to have a private conversation.”
At 5:00 p.m. Jennifer Carnahan, the chairwoman of the Minnesota GOP, mounted the stage and recited a prayer—every rally begins with a prayer, the pledge of allegiance, and a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—and then Bob Kroll, the head of the city’s police union, came on, railing at the mayor’s rule forbidding the wearing of uniforms and declaring that “the Obama administration’s handcuffing of police was despicable.” (It was a remarkable statement, especially read in light of what would happen seven months later—the shocking killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer—and the subsequent revelations that Kroll himself had been the subject of at least twenty-nine complaints of excessive force and racial slurs.)
“Shut the front door!” said Debbie, pointing. “That’s the MyPillow guy!” The arena erupted into roars as Mike Lindell, whose corporate advertisements featuring Lindell himself on billboards and TV throughout Minnesota, mounted the stage. “I want to thank God for allowing this rally to happen,” he said. “I ask the Lord to protect the greatest president this country has ever seen! I was a former crack cocaine addict and I knew nothing about politics when God set me free from my addiction and I saw a president born to fight the evil empires. It was like coming out of a culture coma and a nightmare. Then Donald Trump reached out to me and I met him on August 15, 2016, at Trump Tower. I said I was a former crack cocaine addict and he talked about stopping the drugs. We talked businessman to businessman, and I walked out of his office and said this guy is going to be the greatest president in history.”
Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, emerged next, throwing hats into the increasingly amped-up, screaming crowd. Parscale, six feet eight inches tall, with a crew cut and three-inch beard, resembled a biker in a three-piece blue suit. “Let’s hear it!” he shouted. “Four more years!”
“FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!” came the chants.
“You got one heck of a mayor here. It’s like Hillary’s deplorables all over again. These guys have no idea how to make America Great. He’s taking away your First Amendment right. You’ve got to show up and vote him out.
“This is a hardworking state, right? Our latest coalition is Workers for Trump. How many of you are union workers? President Trump has fought for the American worker since he took office. You guys have to get really loud. I dunno, did I make a mistake about coming to Minnesota?”
Twenty-two thousand voices roared “NO!”
If the music was loud before, now it cranked even higher, so loud people wore those little foam earplugs, and the bass beats thumped in my chest. The lights were unrelenting and the volume increased, the songs of our youth, our best years, the songs of first love and first toke, of keg parties and carefree days and nights. I had expected sappy pop-country music, but this was Queen and man-loving Freddie Mercury belting out “We Are the Champions,” and wiggling Mick Jagger and former heroin addict Keith Richards hammering out “Jumping Jack Flash” and “Satisfaction,” and Elton John, and Guns N’ Roses, and then the song that made everyone—a huge number of them conservative, evangelical Christians—stand and sway and sing: “Young man, there’s a place you can go / I said, young man, when you’re short on your dough / You can stay there, and I’m sure you will find / Many ways to have a good time / It’s fun to stay at the YMCA / It’s fun to stay at the YMCA / They have everything for you men to enjoy / You can hang out with all the boys.” The gayest song every written, a celebration of gay male hypermasculinity, and thousands of people in MAGA regalia were standing, singing the words, making the letters with their arms during the chorus. A crowd bound together, united in anticipation as the pounding music that they’d loved their whole life poured over them. The music—and the words in the speeches—felt counter to everything that Trump stood for or that the people in the arena stood for. British Mick Jagger channeling Black Mississippi blues at a rally for an antiglobalist, America-first president who refused to condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville. Tina Turner, an icon of Black feminist power, inspiring voters who wanted to end a woman’s right to abortion. A celebration of gayness in an arena of fundamentalist Christians who thought homosexuality a sin. Praise for blue-collar workers and unions by a party that had relentlessly destroyed the labor movement through right-to-work laws. But that, I began to understand the more time I spent at Trump’s rallies, was all part of it: an unreality, a bizarro universe of “alternative fact” (as the president’s counselor Kellyanne Conway had famously said) not unlike a professional wrestling match. It was a make-believe, upside-down world that was larger than life, a fantasy arena full of men and women spellbound by the words and the symbols and the icons where all of their hopes and dreams and resentments were addressed. If you suspended disbelief and took it all on face value, it was marvelous. Invigorating. It was the IV of Red Bull that changed people like Dave Thompson’s lives. There was nothing real about any of it, including the president and his policies, and that was what was so compelling—“so great!” in the president’s own words. Those wrestlers smashing chairs over each other’s heads, catapulting off the ropes, body slamming each other and pulling each other’s hair, that was so much more fun than a real boxing match, where the combatants circled and clinched and ducked and wove in a patient hunt for points and many matches passed without a knockout.
Exuberance washed over the crowd. Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me” crashed over the speakers, and I thought of driving to the beach with my girlfriend with the windows down and the hot summer wind back in the summer of 1986 and thousands of other people felt that same feeling and stood and rocked back and forth with their cell phone lights on, thousands of candles burning for the summers of their own youths.
The president was supposed to come on at 7:00 p.m., thirteen hours after I’d arrived at the arena that morning, but at seven there was still no sign of him. The restless crowd stood, swayed, broke into chants, impatient, yearning, hungering. Out walked Brad Parscale again, throwing hats and waving in his beard and suit. “The POTUS is in the building!” he said. “We have tens of thousands of people still outside! It’s unbelievable how many Minnesotans have showed up.”
He waved, and “Purple Rain” cascaded over us—Prince! In Minneapolis!—and those words—POTUS is in the building—lit my imagination like quarters in a pinball machine. I could feel it. Sense it. The Power. Donald Trump exiting the White House and passing all those desperate reporters on the South Lawn and the saluting Marines and the plush Marine One helicopter flight up, up, up over Washington and past the Washington Monument—and there’s Lincoln and Jefferson, the great American titans, and he was one of them. The landing at Andrews Air Force Base. More saluting as he boarded Air Force One, his very own Boeing 747, a gigantic airplane, his, all his, for the flight to Minneapolis. His big black bulletproof limo there waiting and then the motorcade—streets cleared for him, sirens wailing, lights flashing, all for him!—to a stadium with twenty-two thousand people waiting for him alone, the most powerful man in the world, the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world. Shouting. Cheering. Stomping their feet. Chanting. The walk into the arena with each step knowing every single person was watching him with awe. Desire. To meet him. Talk to him. Touch him. Get a nod from him. His blessing. It all would be a drug a million times more powerful than fentanyl for the most sound and grounded man. But for a narcissist? The idea floated periodically that he would resign, that he didn’t really want to be president, was nonsensical when you brushed up against that power at a Trump rally—and he’d been holding rallies every week for years. He was addicted to them as surely as the poor guys on my street corner back home were addicted to K2.
“TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP,” screamed the crowd.
A building with your name on it? Vodka? Ties? Steaks? A golf resort? They were nothing compared to this. “The presidency is as far as [a man] can go,” writes Hunter S. Thompson. “There is no more. The currency of politics is power, and once you’ve been the Most Powerful Man in the World for four years, everything else is downhill—except four more years on the same trip.”
“Don’t play with me ’cause you’re playing with fire,” blasted the Stones.
In the swirl of passion in the arena, I could see the world through Trump’s eyes. Those pesky Democrats in the House calling for documents. Wanting to question him! The journalists criticizing him, doubting him, saying he wasn’t the greatest. Shifty Schiff and Crazy Nancy, indeed, when there were so many people aching to see him, calling him Heaven-Sent. Loving him. Such antagonism was outrageous, unjust! A constant irritation. The haters who wanted to bring him down, the best and greatest president in history. He beat the Bushes. He beat the Clintons. He beat everyone.
Aerosmith hit, “Dream on, dream on, dream on / Dream until your dreams come true.”
The minutes ticked by and the songs and memories and big feelings washed over us and still no Trump. We were antsy. Standing. Waiting and tired of waiting. And then the suits start coming into the stadium, led across the floor to their VIP seats near the stage, and they were jarring. A punch in the gut. They glowed with money. Affluence. Good haircuts and fine tailoring, not like the Pillow Guy’s suit and not like Richard Snowden’s; these men and women were sleek, and their teeth and hair were perfect; they reeked of money and power, compared to the Trumpian peanut gallery in their sweatshirts and MAGA hats. Yet seeing them come in unleashed a savage roar from the crowd. The hair on my arms stood up. He was coming. The one.
The Trumps wanted Minneapolis, and so they’d brought everyone. Eric Trump mounted the stage. “Minnesota! Are you tired of winning yet? Trust me, my father has your back and loves you and we love you as a family. How do you think Elizabeth Warren is feeling right now as she sees this crowd? How do you think Joe Biden is feeling? How do you think his son is feeling after embezzling all that money? Lock him up!”
“LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!”
“America is winning again because of my father. We love you military guys. My father will protect the Second Amendment. I know that’s dear to everyone. He’s going to protect religious liberty. We’re going to be saying Merry Christmas again! We love you. I love you. My family loves you.”
Which was followed immediately by another round of the Village People and “YMCA,” and then Vice President Mike Pence appeared, which in and of itself was pretty weird, this evangelical Christian who said he couldn’t even have lunch with another woman without his wife being present prefaced by six gay dudes in faux uniforms. “Well helloooo, Minnesota! Like all of you here, I’m here because I stand with Donald Trump. And the president stands up for American workers from the cities to the Iron Range, and for faith, freedom, and the American flag. I stand with Donald Trump when the president stands up to the radical Democrats in Congress trying to overturn the will of the American people. We stand with Donald Trump!”
When Pence was done, the crowd grew crazy. The president had to be next, and no one was sitting anymore. But two songs had to play before his entrance, and once you’d been to enough rallies, you knew what they were: the Village People’s “Macho Man” at ten thousand decibels: “Macho, macho man / I gotta be a macho man . . .” And then, at last, always right as he came out, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” After so many hours my knees ached. My ears and head hurt. I had to pee. I was hungry. So much red, white, and blue and so much waiting and suffering and the song lit my cells and my heart swelled—how could it not!—laid bare by so much anticipation . . . and dammit, there he was.
The president of the United States of America.
Walking out of that blue, bunted doorway with his dark blue suit and long red tie and brilliant white shirt. Just one hundred feet away. Right there! Perfect (well, maybe it was kind of fluorescent orange, but so what) tan. That robust head of blond hair, so thick and so upswept. And, wow, he was big. A big man. He walked a few feet and turned and pumped his fists and gave thumbs-up and did it for the folks behind him and in front of him and to the sides and he clapped and paused and clapped again as Greenwood belted out “I’m proud to be an American / Where at least I know I’m free.” Just a few hours ago he’d been in the White House, maybe even with beautiful, elegant Melania in her four-inch stiletto pumps, or sitting at the Resolute Desk signing an executive order, keeping his promises, and now he was here in Minnesota. With us!
To experience a Donald Trump rally speech required suspending all disbelief. The boasts. The brags. I had never heard anything like it. It is Trump unleashed, unhindered. His accomplishments, the finest in history. His electoral victory, the greatest ever. The Chinese had called him1 that very day and congratulated him on the “truly great, great economy.” He was doing battle with “corrupt politicians” and “radical leftists” made rich by “bleeding America dry” who feared that his election would finally end their “pillaging and looting of our country.” The “do-nothing” Democrats were desperate “con artists and scammers” bent on “overthrowing the government” and “destroying democracy.” He was draining the swamp, and it was fighting back, “trying to erase your vote like it never existed.”
“DRAIN THE SWAMP! DRAIN THE SWAMP! DRAIN THE SWAMP!
He imitated FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok texting each other. “I’m telling you, Peter. I’m telling you, Peter, she’s going to win, Peter. Oh, I love you so much,” he said in a high-pitched falsetto. “I love you, Peter. I love you too, Lisa. Lisa, Lisa, oh God, I love you, Lisa! And if she doesn’t win Lisa, we’ve got an insurance policy, Lisa. We’ll get that son of a bitch out.”
He railed at the media: “Look back there. That’s a lot of media. They are so dishonest and frankly, they are so bad for our country.”
Twenty thousand BOOS filled the air, as the crowd in unison extended their arms with thumbs down, pointed at the media corral.
He was building the wall so fast it was unbelievable. And not just any old wall. “This is a serious wall. You’ve all seen it. It’s going up rapidly and you think that was easy? I had every Democrat in Congress fighting me, fighting me, fighting me. I had a lot of the RINOs fighting me.” They said he wasn’t getting it done, but he took money from here, he took it from there and “that sucker is going up, and it is the finest, it is the strongest” wall ever built. Even more incredible, “Most of the Democrats four years ago, they wanted a wall. Now, all of a sudden, they don’t want a wall. You know why they don’t want a wall? Because I want it. It’s the only reason. And I just thought of it, you know, like a year ago, I said, man, this could have been so much easier. All I had to do is say, we don’t want a wall and they would have given me all the financing I wanted for the wall.”
“BUILD THE WALL! BUILD THE WALL! BUILD THE WALL!”
“I love you!” a grown man with a deep voice called out from the crowd.
Trump lambasted the corrupt Democrats for sanctuary cities and criticized Minneapolis for allowing so many Somalians into town and then dived into his Electoral College victory. There was only one reason the corrupt, crooked Democrats were trying to impeach him and that was because they couldn’t win in 2020. His call with Ukraine’s Zelensky? It was perfect. The most perfect call. “Nothing was said wrong in that call. So we released the transcript of the call which was so good that that crooked Adam Schiff, this guy is crooked . . .”
BOOOOOOOO!
“. . . he had to make up a fake conversation that never happened and he delivered to the United States Congress and the American people. It was a total fraud and then Nancy Pelosi said, oh, I think the president said that. These people are sick. I’m telling you they’re sick.” He spun a tale about the “false story from a whistleblower” and Pelosi, who kept “going anyway because the press is fake and they play right into their head. The do-nothing Democratic extremists have gone so far left that they believe it should not be crime to cross our border illegally, and it should be a crime to have a totally appropriate, casual, beautiful, accurate phone call with a foreign leader.”
And then toward the end he started talking about health care. The “socialist Democrats” would “obliterate Medicare,” while “we will always support Medicare and always support preexisting conditions,” a provision that had only been added as part of the Affordable Care Act, which his administration was suing to eliminate.
The craziest part of it was that he was so relaxed and confident and strong. I didn’t want to see it or feel it but I did: an immense strength. A strongman. A force that echoed Mobutu or Idi Amin or Franco and that would plow ahead and kill anything in its path. A force that hundreds of Democratic representatives and smart, hardworking journalists and all of the rails and rules and conventions of almost 250 years of American history might not be enough to stop. Because the truth didn’t matter to him. He was dazzling, there was no question about it, because he was shameless; guilty of nothing, he was willing to say anything. And if you didn’t read the newspaper and only listened to him and the increasingly sycophantic people around him, you didn’t know that 90 percent of it—more than ninety minutes, almost Castro-like—was simply untrue.
I did feel shame, though, and when it was over, I felt dirty. Dirty from listening to him and dirty for participating and dirty for standing in line all day as a kind of infiltrator and nodding along to absurd and gross conversations. I thought of how Borges,2 speaking of Juan Peron’s populist rise in Argentina, said that fascism, having been driven from Germany, had migrated to Buenos Aries: both regimes had advanced oppression, servitude, and cruelty, but it was even “more abominable that they promote[d] idiocy.” I was exhausted, but part of me wanted to scream and to talk to someone. I went to the nearest bar, an Irish joint, and I drank three Scotches too fast and maybe a fourth and confessed my sins to a smart and charming young brother and sister, immigrants, in fact, from some “shithole African country,” who took pity on me and swept me away in an Uber to another bar, from which I only escaped both very late and very drunk.