Trump Rally

she said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side

The University of South Florida Sun Dome seats about 10,000, depending on the seating configuration. Upcoming events include varsity basketball games, George Takei, and the worship band Hillsong United. Tonight it’s the Donald J Trump Presidential Rally.

Entrance for the rally is free but the parking is $20 (cash only). Doors open at 5pm and the rally begins at seven. I plan to arrive as early as I think I can stand it; Trump rallies generally are at capacity. I am worried about a traffic jam and consult Google Maps many times. In the end I decide to leave the car (not mine) in the driveway and take the bus. Sixteen bucks cheaper. It will take forever and a day but I am worried about travelling unknown highways in the dark at high speeds. In America the maximum speed posted on highways is seen as the minimum speed. I imagine fleets of Ford F650s tricked out with Easy Rider rifle racks and Confederate decals.

Items not permitted into the rally include (but are not limited to):

• Firearm of any type
• Weapon of any type
• Hazardous materials
• Chemical materials
• Radiological materials
• Biological materials
• Knives (of any kind)
• Toy guns / toy weapons
• Signage (of any kind)
• Fireworks
• Pepper spray / mace
• Scissors
• Razor blades
• Needles
• Leatherman brand tools (or similar)
• Screwdrivers (or similar)
• Glass bottles
• Tripods
• Coolers
• Air-horns/noise makers of any kind
• Laser pointers
• Aerosol containers
• Soda cans
• Sticks / poles
• Baseballs, softballs, etc
• Outside food and drink
• Produce
• Umbrellas
• Professional cameras and recording devices

I leave to catch the 19 bus at 1:22pm and arrive in line at 4:15. It’s a beautiful and warm Friday evening, three days after Trump’s win in the New Hampshire primary. There are other lines at various gates, but this one is short and almost festive. A news chopper hovers. Many police on bicycles, motorcycles, and walking around. Secret Service agents in black suits and sunglasses, coiled tubing sprouting from their ears. There are two food trucks. Guys work the line selling large buttons ($5) (Bomb the Shit out of ISIS is the clear favourite), Let’s Make America Great Again plastic baseball caps ($20) and T-shirts ($20). The couple in front of me (older, straight, white) buys two of everything.

I am a bit on guard, thinking I want to pass for a friend or at least acquaintance of Donald. I take photographs but do not bring out my paper and pen. A woman is chatting up the couple (older, straight, white) behind me. She is from 20 miles away.  She says, “That communist! They don’t know how bad it will be if the communists get in.” She means Bernie Sanders. They discuss Elton John not approving the playing of Tiny Dancer at Trump rallies.

“Oh,” says one woman, “he’s an avid anti-Trumper.” The other says she will no longer listen to Elton John’s music. “And Adele,” says the first woman. “She said no.” “Adele?” says the second. “I don’t know who she is but I’m not going to listen to her either.” I imagine Adele’s loud laugh as she hears this news.

There are no people of colour in the line. There are black police officers, security guys, garbage guys, food truck guys and button sellers.

Everyone is holding their printed out Eventbrite ticket (not so much a ticket-on-the-phone crowd). The online ticket seller is handling Trump’s many events. Eventbrite passes on email addresses to the Trump campaign. I am now receiving Trump missives. The campaign can’t know whether I actually showed up, which is a small comfort.

Security is run by guys with Secret Service in big letters on their vests. It is quick: walking through an airport-type metal detector and being wanded; examination of bag. I have brought my camera, extra batteries, three pens, four sheets of quad paper, acetaminophen with codeine, and a book: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, which passes through security unremarked but once inside I see a secret service agent off to the side, a woman standing beside him. He is thumbing slowly through her book, looking at the pages. I regret that I did not wait to ask her the title of her book.

I opt to stand on the floor, which looks fairly open and much closer to the stage than the seats. I am about 9 or 10 people back, almost dead center. When people aren’t waving signs around I have a clear view. The stadium is in the basketball configuration; Trump’s lectern is on risers on the floor. Beyond a a buffer zone the crowd is 360° degrees around him. We are told many are watching on screens outside.

Last night Trump was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; next week he has five rallies in South Carolina, ahead of the Republican primary there next Saturday. The Florida primary will be held on March 15. The five rallies in South Carolina make sense because the primary there is open; any voter can walk into a booth and vote. Florida is one of thirteen states where the primary is closed; people may vote in a party’s primary only if they are registered members of that party.

The soundtrack repeats as time wears on. Rolling Stones: Satisfaction, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Paint It Black, Time is on My Side; Elton John: Tiny Dancer, Rocket Man; Pavarotti: Nessun Dorma; Beatles: Hey Jude. Only white guys.

The crowd on the concrete floor is tight. It ends up being a two and a half hour wait. The seats fill up. In the seats directly behind the stage (these are the people who will appear on TV and in photos behind Trump) there are two black people (not sitting together) and an older Sikh man. The seats directly behind where Trump will be are reserved and empty for a long time and then filled by biker dudes and chicks, some wearing American flag do-rags.

Periodically baseball hats (better quality than the ones sold outside) or T-shirts are thrown into the crowd. Signs are passed out. I end up with The Silent Majority STANDS WITH TRUMP and TRUMP Make America Great Again.

Intros and short speeches begin. Finally. My feet are starting to bother me. All the talkers are hawks and ex-military types.

Colonel EJ Otero does not mention that he was born in Puerto Rico. Ted Wilkins is a radio personality who looks like John Hamm and can do a good impression of Obama. He says Ben Carson can be made Surgeon General and that free college means more gender studies courses. Much jeering. Waterboarding jokes. Boos greet a mention of global warming. I need a cigarette. Susan Price speaks badly from her notes. She is daughter of a Marine and herself a Gold Star Mother, meaning mother of a fallen marine. Gary Bernsten is the author of Jawbreaker. Dr Troy Dailey is a religious man. He says America is in a state of emergency and God has raised up Trump to be the next president of the United States. He tells a story of how he was blessed by Billy Graham while still in the womb.

As I listen to these people, all talking about more for the military, how Trump won’t screw the troops, how Trump would have prevented deaths, I am thinking, they are talking about a war machine. Trump is a war monger. It feels frightening.

A group of students is off to my right. Periodically they start to chant Build That Wall, meaning the wall between the US and Mexico, or We Want Trump. They are wrapped in flags and some wear Trump T-shirts. At first I think they are making fun of Trump, but then I realize they are dead serious. Everybody is.

At 7:30 something by Van Halen plays and Trump comes out. The tough veterans who have been bellowing semper fi and hoo-rah like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman now shout, “We love you, Donald!”

Because this is a sports arena the lighting is very white and very bright. Trump’s hair is very yellow. His face is very orange. His teeth are very white. His shirt is very white. His tie is very red. He speaks without notes, with confidence. He does not say anything he does not want to. Except for one acknowledgement of the crowd in the upper tiers (something about whether those people can even see him) he looks straight ahead, into the the first rows and the tops of the heads of those on the floor, which is also directly into media cameras which are at the back of the floor, also on risers.

The crowd is wild. Trump talks in short statements, all of which are greeted by ear splitting cheers.

“We won everything in New Hampshire!”

“These people will be famous!” (people seated behind him)

“Whatever the hell is up there, it’s what we need!” (pointing to his head)

“Twenty-two veterans commit suicide a day. You mean week, month year? A day!”

“Such love in the room!”

“Educate locally, not out of Washington!”

Trump also talks about what he did earlier today. This intrigues me. It’s like we’re meeting for coffee and I just asked him about his day. It’s very conversational. And now he’s nattering about how he settled with Univision. Trump sued (for $500 million) the Hispanic network’s decision to not broadcast the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants last year. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

He uses language best used in private conversation. He does not repeat his comment from a few days ago that Ted Cruz is a pussy, but he uses words like sickos and stinks. Actually, he did with the pussy comment what he often does: he repeats something someone in the audience yells, so it doesn’t seem like his own words. In Manchester, New Hampshire, a woman in the crowd yelled that Cruz is a pussy and Trump, with mock editorializing, repeated it.

Trump rails against special interest groups, lobbyists, Clinton, Bush, and France for its gun laws; he says armed citizens would have made a difference in the Paris attacks. “A gun-free zone,” he yells, “is like candy to a baby!”

His analysis of the contest for president is short and easily understood by his audience. “We got the communist against the entrepreneur,” he yells. “I’ll take the entrepreneur.”

“Bergdahl (tremendous booing) is a dirty rotten traitor!” Tremendous cheering.  “Thirty years ago he would have been shot!” Huge cheers. The arena vibrates.

After almost an hour I have had enough. I am hemmed in and cannot take any photos from a different angle. My feet hurt like hell. My head is in an atrocious state. I make my way to the back of the floor and watch for a minute and walk out.

I get fries from the Bacon Boss food truck. I walk out to the main road to the bus stop. There are many police and more arrive. The stop-and-go traffic is blocked by police in both directions. There are few minutes of quiet and waiting. A radio crackles, “You stay in lock down. I’m on the move.”  Sure enough, about twenty very big motorcycles flashing very bright red, white, and blue lights speed out of the stadium area, turn onto the road where I am waiting for the bus, and zoom on by. A small fleet of Escalades follows, and then more motorcycles. That’s a nice little bonus, I think, to see Trump’s motorcade. My bus comes along.

The thrill of seeing that fucking motorcade wears off an hour and so later when I reach downtown Tampa and the Marion Transit Center. I have missed the last bus to my neck of the woods. By six minutes. In 90 minutes there will be a bus going to near my neck of the woods, but will require a bit of a punishing walk. I have hung out at the MTC several times on other days, waiting for buses. In sunshine it is not a great place to be. It smells like piss and many people want something. At night it feels even less appealing for a 90 minute wait. Shit happens around here. I am exhausted. I have left my credit card at home.

The only bus sitting in the transit center is the 30, which goes to the airport. I have next to no options. I take the 30 and get off at the corner of Kennedy and Westshore. I actually want to go to Westshore, but miles south of where I am. I figure there will be somewhere open where someone can call me a cab. I have $17 in my pocket; I’ll just go as far as it will take me. The manager of a 24-hour Walgreens drugstore calls a cab. It will take 30 minutes to get here; there has been a hockey game at the Amalie Centre.

The cab arrives and a nice guy drives me to the Circle K Shell gas station near to where I am staying. With tip it is $13.

I get a watery hot chocolate and am home four minutes later. It is a bit before midnight, and very quiet.

I feel differently about Trump. I knew he was a joke. Now I know Donald Trump is a frightening joke. This man and his followers are dangerous. A nominated Trump will horrify many but beckon many more. Trump as president is a man lacking filters who gets his own way and says whatever he wants about anybody and anything he wants.

Yes, every president is not in the office alone, but surrounded by layer upon layer of advisors, mandarins, and other elected officials and appointees—many, many of whom have their own ambitions, agendas, entailments, and promises to keep. A president cannot do whatever they want. Obama has not been able to close Guantanamo. So a President Trump will have many people trying to simmer him down. He won’t care. His policies in office might well make him a one-term president. He won’t care.

This is a rally and people get worked up. A mob mentality is in play. But even if I allow for rally fever, the chants and conversations I hear suggest that these are very focused people. There is only Trump. No one says they are considering Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush. No one says they like what Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders has to say, but they have to go with Trump. Trump is the only way. No discussion is possible. If Trump gets the nomination, never mind the presidency, he and these people will be a frightening force. I am not laughing anymore.

In front of Trump’s left shoulder is a guy in a white T-shirt holding up a white sign. Behind the T on the sign is a guy in a red ball cap. I am to the left of his ear. My forehead looks big. I need to brush my hair.