September 2019 | Rolling Stone | 51
of the United States of Ameri-
ca, President Donald Trump!”
The crowd bursts into
roars, hoots, cheers. Trump
pops out onstage. Lee Green-
wood’s “God Bless the USA”
booms over the stadium.
Trump takes his sweet time
to get to the podium. He gives
photogs every pose: the clap,
the wave, the arms akimbo,
the blown kiss. It’s “I’m Too
Sexy” brought to politics. A lot
of candidates scan crowds like
they’re looking for the sniper,
but Trump acts like he’s ready
for a mass frottage session.
“There’s that, too,” agrees
a young Trump supporter
named Andrew Walls later.
“He l-o-o-o-ves what he does.”
Trump gives a double-fist pump in the direc-
tion of a man in a red headband and a green
army vest. When Trump looks in his direction,
the man spasms like a dog blowing a load. Oth-
ers are waving their arms like Pentecostals or
doing V-for-victory signs. It’s pandemonium.
Trump takes the lectern. His hair has visibly
yellowed since 2016. It’s an amazing, unnatural
color, like he was electrocuted in French’s mus-
tard. His neckless physique is likewise a won-
der. He looks like he ate Nancy Pelosi.
“You know,” Trump says, referencing the
Democrats’ debate in Detroit, “I was watching
the so-called debates last night... .”
Boooo!
“... That was long, long television.”
That part is true enough. One wonders if
Trump scheduled a rally the day after the de-
bates on purpose, to steal the end of the flailing
Democrats’ news cycle. He goes on:
“The Democrats spent more time attack-
ing Barack Obama than they did attacking me,
practically,” he says, to cheers. “And this morn-
ing that’s all the fake news was talking about.”TRUMP MERCH
A superfan
of the 45th
president at
the August
rally in
Cincinnati.
Popular items
at events
include
Trumpinator
tees (“2020:
I’ll Be Back”),
Trump as
Rambo (with
headband
and rocket-
launcher),
and the
ever-present
slogan,
“Trump 2020:
Fuck Your
Feelings.”BOOOOOOO!!!!
Nobody draws bigger catcalls than the “fake”
news media. Trump knows this and pauses to
let the bile rise. He expresses pleasure at being
back in “the American heart land,” which he
pronounces as if he’s just learned the term.
He then reflects on his 2016 run, when
hordes of people turned out to send him to
D.C., from places he, Trump, would never have
visited, except maybe by plane crash.
“You came from the mountains and the val-
leys and the rivers, and, uh, you came for —” He
seems to not know what comes after rivers. “I
mean, look, you came from wherever you came
from, and there were a lot of you.”
He ends up telling a story about early vot-
ing in Tennessee in 2016, and a congressman
who told him if the whole country was voting
like this, he was going to win by a lot. “And we
won,” he says. “And we won by a lot.”
Press accounts will call this a lie, and of
course it is, and even the crowd knows it. But
they cheer anyway. In response, Trump stops
and does his trademark stump flourish, turn-ing sideways to flash his iguanoid profile be-
fore stalking around the lectern in resplendent,
obese glory, inviting all to Get a load of me!
It’s indulgent, absurd, narcissistic, and ap-
palling, unless you’re a Trump fan, in which
case it’s hilarious, a continuation of the belly
laughs that began in many parts of America
with Hillary Clinton’s concession speech.
Trump crowds have changed. At the begin-
ning of 2016, trying to pull quotes out of Trump
rallies was like stopping a bunch of straight
men who’d just whacked each other off behind
a trailer. They didn’t want to talk about it.
As time progressed, the crowd’s profile wid-
ened. You met union members, veterans, and
where it got weird was the stream of people
who appeared to be neither traditional Repub-
licans nor, seemingly, interested in politics at
all. Among both young and old, people turned
out who had no conception of Trump as any-
thing but a TV star. This second group’s num-
bers seemed to have swelled.
“I watched the Celebrity Apprentice, and I
loved that,” says Jackie Hoffman, a 60-year-
old grandmother who gushes “we never had”
someone like Trump run for president before.
“Ronald Reagan was a celebrity, but he wasn’t,
like, a big celebrity,” she says.
“I just want to get a feel for the spectacle,”
says Walls. As we talk, he’s gazing at a stand full
of Trump merch. He likes the Punisher motif,
but also the Terminator tee. “If I had money,”
he says, “I’d probably buy that.”
Walls and his friend James Monroe drove in
from Kentucky. Walls is an enthusiastic Trump
supporter, Monroe not — he’s here for the show.
Though they disagree about Trump’s politics,
they express surprise he won the last time.
This is a common theme, when you ask peo-
ple what impresses them most about Trump,
i.e., that he won despite the press. The news
media rate somewhere between herpes and
ISIS in much of the country. “A lot of the media
are very liberal,” says Monroe. “I don’t know
how he won.”GOING NUCLEAR
McConnell uses
“nuclear option,”
abolishing filibuster
for Supreme Court
nominations, to
ram through Trump
nominee Neil Gor-
such with a simple
majority vote.
‘SKINNY REPEAL’
McConnell tries to
repeal Obamacare,
holds no public
hearings on bill that
would strip 16 mil-
lion of health insur-
ance, but is foiled
by John McCain’s
thumbs-down.DEFICIT HYPOCRISY
McConnell leads the passage of the Trump
tax bill that benefits corporations and the
wealthy, and will raise the deficit by $1.4 tril-
lion. When the deficit does indeed balloon
the next year, McConnell blames Medicare
and other social safety nets.DEC.NUCLEAR SEQUEL
McConnell’s Senate-
rules revamp pays
off again as Brett
Kavanaugh is
confirmed to the
Supreme Court
through a simple
majority vote.UN-DEMOCRATIC
McConnell
calls Dem legis-
lation to increase
voter turnout by
making Election
Day a holiday a
“power grab.”BY ANY MEANS
Further dismantling
procedural rules,
McConnell decreas-
es Senate debate
time for lower-level
Trump nominees
from 30 hours to
two hours.NEW HEIGHTS
OF HYPOCRISY
When asked
what he’d do if a
Supreme Court va-
cancy arose in 2020
before the election,
McConnell grins:
“Oh, we’d fill it.”APRIL 20 17 JULY OCT. 20 18 JAN. 20 19 APRIL MAYCLOCKWISEFROMTOP:^
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