We’ve all seen the images of Trump rallies on television. How could we not, given the cable news networks deciding to be All Trump! All The Time! But last Sunday I had a chance to attend a Trump rally in Boca Raton, and decided to go take an in-person look.
First, I needed to request a “ticket” to the rally. Not surprisingly, the process is basically an email collection scam. Anyway, I signed up for my ticket and headed to the rally on Sunday.
I arrived early and found that many others had done so as well—including protesters (see photo above). The protesters were shunted off to a “protest zone” a good distance from the entrance to the rally. Nonetheless, many persons wandered over, including a group of counterprotesters.
There was a lot of chanting and shouting between the protesters and counterprotesters, but there was a legion of police officers who made sure no one came near each other. Physical altercations were not going to happen, thankfully.
However, there was also a concerted effort by the authorities to keep any protesters outside of the event, even when they had tickets for the rally. There would be no Chicagos in Boca Raton.
Clearly the police decided they would prefer to be criticized for a heavy hand in keeping potential combatants apart than to have any incidents of violence.
I decided to wander into the event to get my first glimpse of a Trump rally crowd. I’m not sure what my expectations were as I went in, but I certainly expected an overwhelmingly white crowd. In fairness, that’s certainly not unique to Donald Trump in Republican circles. Every GOP rally will be overwhelmingly white. But I guess I was wondering about the “working-class whites” line the media has been trumpeting.
But before I reached the venue, I ran the gauntlet of the (ahem, “self-funded”) Trump campaign’s concessionaires selling Trump stuff.
I’m not exactly sure how campaign finance disclosures handle these types of things. Can someone buy 10,000 Trump hats, buttons, or shirts?
In any event, they were selling a lot of these at the event. Unless Trump is just pocketing his share of these sales, this obviously isn’t “self funding.” Rather, this is a way of funding the campaign. Worth taking a look at, FEC.
After passing the hawkers I then had to go through security, which was quite “vigilant,” to put it kindly. It was thorough and the process moved slowly.
But I finally got in and immediately needed to put on sunglasses—yes, it was very, very white. Blindingly white. While there were a few African Americans and other minorities, they were few and far between. It was an older crowd, which is the norm in Florida.
The event was scheduled for 7 PM and I walked into the venue around 6:15 PM or so. It was already a sizable crowd but about half full—probably around 2,500 people at that hour, but the crowd was growing.
Around 6:30 PM, the blaring music was lowered and a speaker was announced and took the stage. She was a woman who tragically lost her son in a heinous murder. She told her moving story about how her son left for school in the morning but did not show up for his after-school job. She was frantic and called the police, who discovered that her son had been brutally murdered and mutilated.
Finally she revealed that the killer of her son was an “illegal immigrant” and the crowd exploded. The anger at the fact the murderer was an “illegal immigrant” was almost stronger than the fact the woman’s son had been murdered. She expressly blamed Marco Rubio for the death of her son. It was rough, and the crowd was angry. Any protesters revealing themselves right then would have been at great risk.
But it was a moment that revealed what the Trump movement is all about: Hating non-white people, especially immigrants.
The energy was high following the grieving mother’s speech and the next speaker was a Jeff Sessions policy guy (Sessions endorsed Trump) who just laid into Marco Rubio and all things immigrant. A protester emerged then and luckily for her, was escorted out of the venue without being physically attacked by the crowd.
But then a funny thing happened. Trump was late. Very late. And they had no more speakers lined up, so they played the same playlist over and over again. I think I heard the same songs in the same order at least three times. Boredom and impatience were setting in.
Finally, around 7:45 PM, an announcement told us “Trump Force One” (I’m not kidding, that’s what he said) has landed! And Trump would be there in a few minutes. Well, about 20 minutes later, Trump’s arriving helicopter buzzed the crowd and maybe 15 minutes after that, the man himself came out.
His entrance was Las Vegas fight night. All it needed was Michael Buffer. And the crowd was by then huge—probably 6,000 people. (Trump, of course, said it was 15,000.) And the crowd was excited—but not as excited as they were when the immigrant hate was being ginned up.
Trump came out and gave his usual spiel: Polls, his plutocratic friends, terrible deals. His great stuff. How great he is. He was a little light on immigrant hate, and made a big point of taking credit for avoiding trouble in Chicago. Personally, I thought he didn’t fully have his crowd. They wanted the red meat. They wanted the hate. Indeed, it was the crowd that brought up Trump’s Wall, with a spontaneous and loud chant of “BUILD THE WALL!”
Trump took their cue and talked about his big beautiful wall that Mexico will pay for, but then turned back to the issue of how great he is. The crowd agreed, but seemed to want more hate from Trump.
I left before the end after seeing enough to be able to say what the Trump movement is—at least at this rally. The Trump movement is older white people that hate immigrants and other non-whites.
In other words, it is the Republican Party. It is the Republican Party discarding the dog whistle. It is the Republican Party’s id. It is what they’ve long wanted the Republican Party to say, loudly and proudly.
It is what the Republican Party has built, especially during the Obama era.
Yes, they built that.
And what they built has to be defeated.
That’s also what this election is about.