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TRUMPCOUNTRY
ROUNDANDROUND
A
t ten o’clock on the morning of
January 25th, when Donald Trump’s
lawyers started the clock on their de-
fense at his impeachment trial, thou-
sands of his supporters gathered at the
Daytona International Speedway, two
America were white English people, but
we don’t go whining about it. Get over
it. My buddy’s back hurts”—he gestured
toward a friend—“and he’s not com-
plaining.” Scott Adkins, whose back
hurt and who was smoking Swisher
Sweets, responded, “They took all your
guns away in England. ” He went on,
“I’ve got enough guns to hold off the
Mexican Army.” (Adkins is currently
rereading the “Game of Thrones” books
for the seventeenth time.)
“There’s not a place for politics in
sports at all,” Platt said. “I want to see
fast cars passing each other. That’s it.”
He continued, “This is about noise,
speed, and smell. Men have always raced.
It’s fun time for boys: fires, generators,
R.V.s. Men like noise.”
“Daytona is the only place where
you’ll see a Lamborghini in a Super 8-
motel parking lot,” Hunt said.
Meanwhile, in the fan zone, the race-
track announcer mentioned the coro-
navirus and an upcoming Burns Night
poetry reading. Sponsors handed out
earplugs. A group of bachelor-party at-
tendees in the stands surrounded the
bachelor, who wore a shirt that read
“Same Pussy Forever, It Had Better Be
Good.” Outside the gates, signs advertised
$8.99 Botox and affordable dentures.
Back at the campground, Wes Em-
mons, who met Sean Hannity “when
he was a nobody,” handed out shots ofliam Wyler film. “He gets a lifetime pass
for conspiring with Gore Vidal behind
Heston’s back to make Ben-Hur’s back-
story gay,” Oswalt said.
St. John appeared in a tiger-striped
bikini and long, claw-tipped gloves. “She
made out with Henry Kissinger,” Os-
walt said, appreciatively. “This is like
looking at a new Zapruder print,” Nel-
son said. “It has details! Note the claws.”
An hour and twenty minutes in, Oswalt
was feeling the weight of time: “Who’s
President? What’s a gallon of milk cost
now?” He went on, “Folks, you could
have read a story to your child, done a
puzzle, had a nice conversation with a
friend. You will flash back to this mo-
ment on your deathbed and curse your-
self. ‘Harlan, Harlan, if you’re up there!
So sorry! This movie is so fuckin’ bad!’ ”
Nelson produced Werner Herzog’s
“Encounters at the End of the World”
and was nominated for an Academy
Award in 2009; certain that “Man on
Wire” would win, he didn’t attend the
ceremony. Olson, too, is an Oscar nom-
inee, for his adaptation of “A History
of Violence,” a contender the same year
that “Brokeback Mountain” won. “As
Harlan was fond of saying, when we
were writing together and arguing, ‘You
are an Academy Award loser,’ ” he said.
In the movie’s final scene, Frankie Fane
is at the Academy Awards, up for Best
Actor. When Merle Oberon, as herself,
announces the winner—“Frank ... Sina-
tra”—Fane begins clapping psychotically,
his face a mask of bewilderment, a GIF
in every frame.
Nelson said, “We have to swear a
blood oath that, the next time we all
lose at the Oscars, we’ll stand up and
do the Frankie Fane clap.”
—Dana Goodyear
“I think it was Fitzgerald who wrote, ‘The very rich
are different from you and me.’”• •
hundred miles north of Mar-a-Lago,
for twenty-four hours of uninterrupted
auto racing. At the Rolex 24, America’s
only daylong endurance race—Michael
Avenatti has competed in it, and Paul
Newman won when he was seventy—
thirty-eight cars drive laps around three
and a half miles of hot asphalt through
the night and into the next afternoon,
or until they break down or crash. The
speedway’s seats were scantily filled;
most attendees camped in a micro-
civilization of tents and R.V.s. Some
never leave the campgrounds to see the
cars; a sign at the entrance read “Happy
Hour 1:40 p.m.-1:40 p.m.” Another sign,
in the outfield, said “Trump 2020, the
Sequel: Make the Liberals Cry Again.”
Despite the President’s tweet encour-
aging his followers to watch his trial on
TV, there was no impeachment talk at
the raceway. A man named Michael Hunt,
who was wearing a neon-yellow T-shirt
and drinking a large cup of Mountain
Dew, said, “The race is about fellowship.”
Nearby, the owner of an orange R.V. with
a Confederate-flag decal on its bumper
explained the sticker’s provenance: “It
started with the Civil War, or whatever.
The North against the South. And then
there was slavery involved. I don’t know
the exact whole story. They’ve turned it
into a racist thing.”
An elderly British man named Barry
Platt weighed in: “The first slaves inTHENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY10, 2020 15