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‘Could he actually win?’ Dave Eggers at a Donald Trump rally

I spent five hours at the Donald Trump
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump> rally in Sacramento,
California, on 1 June. I spoke to and overheard dozens of the rally’s
attendees, not as a journalist but as one ticketholder to another – I was
dressed in jeans, workboots and wore a Nascar hat – and found every last
one of the attendees to be genial, polite and, with a few notable
exceptions, their opinions to be within the realm of reasonable. The rally
was as peaceful and patriotic as a Fourth of July picnic.

And yet I came away with a host of new questions and concerns. Among them:
why is it that the song Trump’s campaign uses to mark his arrival and
departure is Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer?”
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoskDZRLOCs> Is it more troubling, or less
troubling, knowing that no one in the audience really cares what he says?
And could it be that because Trump’s supporters are not all drawn from the
lunatic fringe, but in fact represent a broad cross-section of regular
people, and far more women than would seem possible or rational, that he
could actually win?

***

It was a sweltering 95 degrees, the sky blue and sun punishing, when I
pulled off the highway and, guided by a well-planned and orderly array of
cops and cones and sirens, made my way to a peripheral part of the
Sacramento airport, where the Trump rally would be held, in an empty hangar.

It was just before four o’clock in the afternoon, and the rally wouldn’t
start until seven, but already the lot was crowded with cars and trucks –
not all of them American-made. When I parked, I glanced at the car next to
me, and found that a young couple in casual business attire was engaged in
casual amorous activity. Seeing my car arrive, the woman straightened her
skirt and the man removed his hand from under her bra, but otherwise they
continued undeterred.

It was the first, but not the last time, that it was clear that a good
portion of the audience saw the rally as not purely a political event, but
as something else, too – an entertainment, a curiosity, an opportunity to
sell merchandise and refreshments, a chance to do some late-afternoon
groping in the parking lot.

Like a lot of comedy, the appeal is in the forbidden delight. We can’t
believe someone said that, on stage, to so many

For a year now, I’ve been watching the Trump candidacy the same way the
rest of the world and at least half of the American population has – first
as a harmless sideshow, then as a worrisome sideshow, then as an
increasingly surreal and dangerous sideshow, and finally as a terrifying
looming nightmare with echoes of Mussolini, Joseph McCarthy, *Kristallnacht*
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/kristallnacht> and Hitler. News reports
and isolated video clips have made Trump’s rallies seem like bacchanalian
proto-fascist white power orgies, fuelled by bald racism, pseudo-Nazi
salutes and the imminent threat of violence toward any detractors. For
months now I’ve believed that Trump’s candidacy was the most dangerous
presidential campaign in modern American history. But the reality of a
Trump rally, or at least *this* Trump rally, was about as threatening
as a Garth
Brooks
<https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/29/garth-brooks-country-music-rich-list-earning-90m-past-year>
concert.

Tickets to all Trump rallies are free and are available to anyone; you
simply print one from Trump’s website and bring it with you. I chose not to
go to the rally as a card-carrying member of the media, given at this point
– and this truth was borne out repeatedly over the course of the day –
Trump supporters, like Trump himself, are exceedingly distrustful of the
media. If I had a notebook or microphone out, asking questions, the answers
would be guarded or rehearsed, if anyone spoke to me at all. Instead, I
decided I’d stand in line with everyone else, knowing that the six or seven
people around me would be my window into at least a small portion of the
Trump supporter’s mentality. I took my place at the back of the orderly
line.

“See that?” the man in front of me said. He was pointing to a jet’s white
trail in the sky above us. “That’s the air force. They’re spraying shit in
the sky.”

I’ll call this man Jim. He was about 6ft tall, beer-bellied, and wearing
shorts and a yellow T-shirt with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” printed
above a rattlesnake. His hair and moustache were rust-coloured, his eyes
small and wary.

Over the next 90 minutes, as we stood and occasionally shuffled toward the
hangar together, Jim offered his theories on a variety of government and
corporate conspiracies. This first one involved the air force releasing a
toxic mixture of chemicals into the atmosphere, which he claimed they had
been doing for 30 years. “They’re manipulating the weather with
technology,” he said, “and they call it climate change. But really they’re
changing the climate with technology.” He pointed to a wash of cirrus
clouds high in the western sky. “See those fake-ass clouds? They use them
to block out the sun. That’s why we don’t have springtime any more.”
[image: Badges and T-shirts for sale at the rally]
Photograph: Dave Eggers

By quoting Jim, I realise I’ve made him sound nuts. But Jim wasn’t all that
nuts. His theories were occasionally bizarre, but he expressed them calmly,
and to everyone in line he was gregarious and kind. He laughed at
appropriate moments. He was friendly and generous, repeatedly buying water
for people around him, expressing interest in people, doing normal-people
things. Later in this piece, I’ll quote Jim again, and again he’ll sound
nuts, but all I can say here is that when you spend 90 minutes next to
someone, you can gauge their level of loony, and Jim was merely a low-grade
crank – not unlike that certain uncle in any family who’s fun to be around
but who holds strange views about, say, water fluoridation.

Jim had strange views about water fluoridation. Because it was 95 degrees
and sunny, and because we were standing in a shadeless parking lot in the
height of the afternoon, vendors selling bottled water were doing a brisk
business. When one approached us, pulling his wares in a red wagon, Jim
asked if the water had come from Nestlé. The vendor looked at one of the
bottles he was selling and seemed relieved that they weren’t Nestlé. Jim
bought two.

“Don’t buy Nestlé shit, it’s got fluoride in it,” Jim said to me, handing
me a bottle.

I tried to pay, but Jim wouldn’t have it. I asked him why Nestlé would put
fluoride in their bottled water.

“Trying to dumb us down so we don’t vote for Trump,” he said, only
half-joking. “Do you know history? Hitler started it.”

I asked why Hitler had put fluoride in the water. I had no idea how long
we’d be in line, so there was time to kill.

“To dumb down the people,” Jim said. “Make them lethargic.” Now Jim looked
into the sky again, at the trails of the passing jets. “Then they spray the
shit in the sky. Double whammy. They’re actually spraying that with *our*
air force. I wish they were still serving their country, but … ” He sighed
and took a pull on his fluoride-free H20.

In the background, the soundtrack was provided by a man named Kraig Moss, a
very kind and gentle older man with a guitar and a terrible story to tell.
He was dressed like a cowboy, in jeans, boots, a denim vest and a worn-out
hat, and had planted a small sound system on the lot, connected to a
microphone. Moss has followed Trump’s rallies around the country, playing
songs he has written, all of them available on a CD he was selling
called *Donald
Trump for President*.

“My name is Kraig Moss,” he said into the microphone, talking over a
recording of one of his songs, “Trump Train”
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMyba4T9AzQ>. “I’m from Oswego, New York.
I wrote this song and many others that are on this CD. On 6 January 2014 I
lost my son to a heroin-fentanyl overdose. That was in Oswego. And I talk
to the kids about the ongoing heroin epidemic. How available it is. And how
important it is to stay away. I’m supporting myself out here. I’m not
independently wealthy. I don’t get any help from the campaign. I just come
to get the folks riled up. Talk to ’em, play a little music, and then on to
the next rally. I been to 33 of ’em.”

I bought two CDs from Kraig and I gave one to Jim. The songs were country
songs, with titles including “Save Our Nation”, “Americans Will Win”,
“Trump Chant Short” and “Trump Chant Long”.
[image: Kraig Moss]
Kraig Moss. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

In front of me and Jim was a family of three. The mother, who I’ll call
Belinda, was black-haired, about 40, diminutive and youthful looking,
wearing a white tank top, huge black sunglasses and a pink baseball hat.
Her daughter, a taller, younger version of herself, was dressed much the
same, while her son, who was much taller, well over 6ft, wore a tank top
and a straight-brimmed baseball cap. They were quiet much of the time, the
teenagers politely enduring the more or less incessant monologuing of Jim
and another soapboxer, who I’ll call Ron.

More so than any other attendee I encountered at the rally, Ron embodied
the Trump voter we have come to expect. He was middle-aged and white. He
wore a white Trump T-shirt, crisp and new, tucked into blue jeans that
looked like they’d been ironed that morning. He wore workboots and mirrored
sunglasses and was fit for his age, with the bearing of a gym teacher or
ex-Marine.

Ron preferred to stand a few yards off the orderly line, like a general
inspecting his troops. With his arms crossed in front of him, facing the
back of the line, at first I thought he was from the Trump campaign, tasked
with examining the attendees and ferreting out spies. But soon enough it
was clear he was just a man who liked an audience, and for much of the next
hour, whenever Jim wasn’t talking about chem trails and fluoridation, Ron
held court, facing Jim, Belinda, her kids and me, as if we were paying
customers he was obligated to entertain and educate.

“Have you read his books?” Ron asked Belinda, meaning the many books with
Trump’s name on them, ghostwritten by others.

Belinda shook her head, no. “I just follow him on Twitter,” she said.

“I read his books years ago and always loved the guy,” Ron said. “I always
wished he would run. His books are all easy reads. Simple English. Read
them and you’ll say ‘Holy guacamole, this guy had a crystal ball!’ He
predicted everything – 9/11, everything. Guy’s a freaking genius. He had a
159 IQ when he graduated from college. Imagine what it is now!”

OK. Now, by quoting Ron, I’ve made him out to sound like a lunatic, too.
But Ron was not really a lunatic. Ron was likable and sympathetic, given
how desperate he was to have a handful of people listen to him talk about
his two heroes: Donald J Trump and Ronald Reagan
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ronald-reagan>. In his mind, the two
men were equally great, cut from the same iconic cloth. Over the course of
an hour, I heard Ron tell three different versions of the story of meeting
Reagan. The story went something like this:

“Ronald Reagan. I met Ronald Reagan. When I was a kid I was in the Cub
Scouts? I was one of a few kids who got to meet him. This was in San Jose.
All the Scouts had gathered, and everyone wanted to meet him. All my
friends had gone up there to meet him, but I didn’t care to. So, later in
the day, my parents said, ‘You gotta go meet this guy. He could be the
president one day.’ So I went up, and he had this huge head. And he just
sat there and asked me all these questions. He was real interested in me.
Just a nice guy. And he had huge hands, too.”

Ron, all these years later, was still moved by, flabbergasted by, the
attention Reagan paid to him as a boy. It was frankly touching. More
touching still was the visible pleasure Ron displayed in finding out that
Belinda was Mexican-American, a fact she offered after a group of
protesters walked by yelling “Trump’s a fascist!” One of them was waving a
Mexican flag.

“I’m Latina,” Belinda told Ron. “My mother’s from Mexico.” She explained
that people are confused about Trump’s attitudes toward Mexico, and that he
has more support among Latinos than assumed. She and her mother, she said,
were in favour of the wall.

“My friend is Mexican, too,” Ron explained to Belinda and to everyone
nearby. “He’s got his citizenship, and he worked on Obama’s campaign in
Chicago. Knocking on doors in 10-degree weather. And now he’s on the Trump
train. And I got another friend, he’s Muslim, from Afghanistan. I work with
him every day because his auto place is next to my business. I get his
deliveries for him, and he gets mine. He’s going for Trump, too, and he’s
Muslim. So don’t believe the media.”

I should pause here and provide some context. Trump, of course, has
promised to build a wall between Mexico and the United States, a project
that experts estimate would cost $25bn – though Trump has insisted that he
will make Mexico pay for it. At the time of this rally, Trump had recently
asserted that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, assigned to a class-action lawsuit
against him and Trump University
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/31/donald-trump-university-playbook-real-estate-courses>,
should be disqualified from the case given his Mexican heritage (Curiel was
born in Indiana). Facing a quick backlash, Trump did what he does so
brilliantly: he doubled down, stating that he would face prejudicial
treatment from a Muslim judge, too. This pair of assertions provoked
widespread outrage, including a rebuke from Republican leader Paul Ryan
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/paul-ryan>, who called the statements
“racist” – a rare use of the word within GOP ranks.

But among our little clique, the discussion of Trump’s non-racist nature
continued.

“They say Trump’s a racist and a hater,” Ron said. “Wait a minute. Wait a
minute. Forty years you guys love this guy, and now you say he’s all these
things? It don’t add up.”

Trump could say the wall should be built on the Canadian border, and no
one would blink

As we’d been waiting, about 500 more people had arrived to stand in line
behind us. Vendors moved up and down the line, selling Trump T-shirts,
buttons and towels. And all the while, the scene was exceedingly calm. It
might have been the heat. It might have been the fluoridation Jim was
talking about. But the attendees could have easily been confused with
people in line for a Disney ride or a holiday sale at Walmart. They were
amiable, polite, dressed in red, white and blue shorts and tank tops and
sandals, and surprisingly diverse.

Yes, they were generally white, but there were also African-Americans and
plenty of Latinos. A startling number of Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders
and South Asian-Americans. There were the expected Harley-Davidson riders
in black vests, but there were also a remarkable number of people with
disabilities. There were families, professional types, veterans and one
Filipino-American navy officer in full dress whites. It was not the
homogenous sea of angry white men that one might have expected. Instead, it
appeared to be a skewed but not wholly unrepresentative cross-section of
the people of northern California.

Which made some interactions with the protesters feel odd. The
demonstrators had every reason to denounce Trump’s past statements, but
there seemed to be a wide gulf between the extreme things Trump has said
and the more moderate views of the people who came out to this rally. One
young man walked by with a bullhorn, followed by a handful of photographers
and videographers.

“Trump supporters are assholes and idiots,” the young man hissed.

“Don’t take the bait,” Jim said to Belinda. The young man with the bullhorn
repeated his assessment for the next half an hour as he made his way
through the parking lot.

“You come up with that all by yourself?” Jim yelled after him.

The line moved on. As we got closer to the hangar, the merchandise tables
became more frequent and their purveyors more surprising. A woman speaking
heavily accented English and wearing a Service Employees International
Union cap sold bright green Trump T-shirts. An older African-American
couple were stationed at a table featuring a dozen different Trump shirts,
hats and buttons.

“You guys look like Trump voters!” Jim said to them. They laughed and
nodded, and asked him if he wanted to buy anything. The T-shirts were $20.

***

When, at about five o’clock, the hangar was finally opened, the line moved
swiftly. A few dozen police officers in riot gear stood outside the
entrance and manned the metal detectors inside. Large cameras weren’t
allowed. No thermoses or breakable water containers were allowed. Posters
and banners were not permitted. Trump operatives in well-tailored suits
buzzed near the security area, ostensibly looking for security risks and
simple troublemakers. Others handed out “Veterans for Trump” placards.

Once we passed through the metal detectors, we were free to move throughout
the hangar. The hangar door faced west, and the early evening sun streamed
through, casting everything and everyone in silhouette. The crowd milled
cheerfully, as they would before a country fair or an outdoor concert,
which in many ways the scene resembled. Speakers were set up near the
hangar door, and played a succession of songs by musicians – Bruce
Springsteen (“Born to Run”), Queen (“Under Pressure” and “Hammer to Fall”),
the Rolling Stones (“Start Me Up”) – whose support for Trump might be
considered unlikely.
[image: Supporters assemble in the hangar prior to Trump’s arrival at the
rally in Sacramento, California, on 1 June]
Supporters assemble in the hangar prior to Trump’s arrival at the rally in
Sacramento, California, on 1 June. Photograph: Dave Eggers

A few hundred people had already staked out a place against the temporary
barrier set up outside, separating the hangar from the tarmac. But most
stayed inside, in the shade, and as I moved among them, taking pictures, I
noticed another unexpected demographic reality – the audience was at least
half women. There were women of all ages, socioeconomic classes and
ethnicities. Black women, white women, Indian women, teenagers, preppy
women, women dressed as if heading to a party at the beach, women in heels,
older women in large groups, one elderly woman in a “Veterans of Foreign
Wars” hat. Despite all the things that Trump has said that indicated, or
proved, he was at best an unreconstructed chauvinist and at worst a
misogynistic and existential threat to the foundational rights of women,
his appeal among the women of the Sacramento area was real. And could it be
that the song playing as we entered the hangar was Carly Simon’s “No
Secrets”? It could. It was.

On the wall of the hangar was an enormous American flag. Below it, a grid
of folding chairs had been assembled, set aside for elderly men and women
who had served in the armed forces. A veteran in full camouflage, holding
himself steady with a wheeled walker, made his way to a seat. Two tidy
lines waited to get free water from a series of drinking fountains. As I
waited for a drink, I watched an elderly man attempt to take a picture of a
bearded man and his young son. The elderly man’s hands were shaking too
much to get the shot, so he turned to me. “Can you help?” He gave me the
bearded man’s camera and the father and son posed, the son standing in
front of the father, the father’s arms around him. They smiled, and I
pushed the red button on the smartphone. “I’m sorry,” the elderly man said
to me, and to the father. “My hands … ” He walked off, his hands trembling.

A smattering of people had found spots on the floor, sitting in the shade,
waiting, fanning themselves with Veterans for Trump placards. It was about
5.30pm now, with Trump’s scheduled speech still over an hour away. I sat
down near an Indian-American man, sitting alone, reading a yellowed
paperback book. I looked closer. The book was *A Passage to India*
<https://bookshop.theguardian.com/passage-to-india-3.html/?utm_source=editoriallink&utm_medium=merch&utm_campaign=article>.
I swear this is true. Soon a woman sat between the Forster fan and me. She
was an African-American woman of about 35, wearing a Trump shirt and
passing the time by scrolling through her phone. Her right arm was covered
in severe burns.

I opened Kraig Moss’s CD. Inside, there was a picture of a handsome young
man with bright blue eyes and a gentle smile. This was Kraig’s son Rob JR
Moss. Below the photo there was a message from Kraig. “We all cope with
death in different ways. Supporting Mr. Donald J Trump for president and
singing to the folks at his rallies has allowed me to talk about my son Rob
JR Moss, the tragedy heroin brings to users and their families, along with
meeting so many GREAT people along the way. Many who have experienced the
same heartbreak I have.”

I sat and watched the crowd move about the hangar. A group of tanned young
men in sleeveless shirts and cowboy hats roamed, looking a bit like fashion
models on their way to a dude-ranch photo shoot. A young Trump impersonator
was meandering through the crowd with a friend, who acted like his handler,
helping arrange photos. They were both about 14. Up close, the
impersonator’s outfit was shockingly good. In a blue suit and red tie, he
looked much as Trump had in the 80s, with his unlined face, his yellow
hair, his playground bully’s slouch. Each time he posed for a picture, he
leaned back, squinting, his stubby index fingers pointed in the air.
[image: Trump merchandise]
Trump merchandise. Photograph: Dave Eggers

The vendors in the parking lot had been selling a wide variety of Trump
gear, much of it on the extreme end of the messaging scale. One T-shirt
featured a pair of boxing gloves dangling together in such a way that they
looked like large red testicles. “Finally someone with balls,” the text
read. Another featured a cartoon of Trump and Hillary Clinton
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/hillary-clinton> next to each other.
Hillary was attached, like a marionette, to strings held by a large
disembodied hand. Next to her, Trump was depicted holding a pair of
scissors, having apparently just cut his strings. Also, he is grinning and
giving the middle finger to the large hand overhead. There were buttons and
shirts that said “Bomb the Hell Out of Isis”. The nastiest button was the
one, sold at most of the vendors’ booths, featuring the text:

KFC Hillary Special
Two Fat Thighs
Two Small Breasts
… Left Wing

I mention this because in all the time we stood in line, I saw no one
purchasing any of this merchandise, and, once in the hangar, I saw none of
it worn by or carried by any of the attendees. Almost without exception, if
anyone was wearing any Trump gear at all – and about half of the audience
members were – it was of the simple “Trump: Make America Great” variety.
The crowd wore this slogan on the signature red hats, they wore it on
T-shirts and they carried official campaign placards bearing this message.
But the nastier stuff offered outside had gone largely unsold.
[image: The crowd greets Trump’s plane on its arrival at the rally]
The crowd greets Trump’s plane Photograph: Dave Eggers

The mood among the people gathered was so gentle, so calm and so welcoming,
that, when the first notes of “Tiny Dancer” emerged from the sound system,
the song didn’t seem at all incongruous. The hour or so in the hangar had
been festive and happy, the air warm and the sky blue. When it was
announced that Trump’s plane would be landing imminently, the crowd had
moved closer to the tarmac, and a succession of local politicians had given
short speeches about the merits of Trump, of faith and of diversity. When
they finished, Trump’s plane came into view, taxiing toward the hangar, and
the soundtrack to it all was “Tiny Dancer”. For a few minutes, as women
bounced on their toes and hundreds of cameras were held aloft, that
gorgeous song took over.

Blue jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her, dancing in the sand
And now she’s in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand

For a moment it seemed possible that the person about to get out of the
plane was a man of subtle taste and kindness, a man who could appreciate
such beauty, who was secure enough in himself to set his arrival in
Sacramento to the soundtrack of a 45-year-old song by a gay troubadour.

Jesus freaks out in the street
Handing tickets out for God

When the plane got closer, though, “Tiny Dancer” gave way to the film score
from *Air Force One*. The theme was portentous and loud, and the mood of
the moment pivoted drastically, from Elton’s sweet poignancy, implying the
arrival of a tired touring man coming to greet his supporters late in the
California afternoon, to something far more fascist-theatrical. The plane
got closer, and the audience was meant to blur, mentally for a moment, the
lines between Harrison Ford playing the president and Donald Trump doing
the same – between the real *Air Force One*, the filmic version, and
Trump’s plane.

The plane rolled slowly, directly, towards the hangar, before turning to
run parallel with the crowd, the full length of the plane positioned behind
the podium. Once the plane stopped, the theme from Air Force One ended, and
when the plane’s door opened and Trump emerged, the music changed
drastically again: now to explosive EDM, which sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Trump was wearing a blue suit, a white shirt and his red baseball cap. He
has not historically been the kind of man who would wear a baseball cap. He
is not a man known to appear in public casually dressed. Photos of him
wearing shorts or jeans – common accessories to a baseball hat – would be
hard to find. And yet this hat has become emblematic of his campaign, and
is the most common souvenir worn by his supporters.

But the only reason the hat exists at all is because Trump can’t appear
outside without risking the precarious cotton-candy sculpture of his hair
coming undone. For years, he had been caught on camera with his hair
swirled high in the air, exposing his bald dome, his golden hairs standing
on end, 12 inches skyward. He looked ludicrous and vulnerable. He looked
like a clown. So in the early days of this campaign, he arrived at a
solution: the hat.
[image: Donald Trump in his baseball cap]
Donald Trump in his baseball cap. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

Though it solves the problem of his flyaway hair, observers from the rest
of the world should know that Trump does not know how to wear a baseball
cap. He wears it very low on his head, such that the top of it billows up
and out like a baker’s, or a train conductor’s, hat. But Trump’s cap,
however clumsily worn, has had an unexpected result. With his red cap on,
the glossy billionaire living in a gilt Manhattan apartment appears to have
something in common with the rest of the country, who wear caps when
they’re actually at baseball games, when they’re driving tractors through
wheat fields, when they’re barbecuing in their backyards. And maybe because
he looks so ridiculous in it, Trump’s hat is something of an equaliser.

“Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Veterans. I love the veterans.”
This is how he began. “So I raised almost $6m for the veterans, and the
press was killing me. Unbelievable.” He had barely said hello and was
already riffing. “You know, you do something like that and it takes your
heart a little bit.”

These were the first sentences of Trump’s speech, and they reveal why Trump
is so captivating as a speaker. First of all, there was barely a preamble.
There was nothing like the usual litany of careful gratitude towards the
local political machinery. In fact, Trump acknowledged not one of the
speakers that preceded him and praised him. Instead, he went straight to
the red meat, to vivid, hard-punching words: six million dollars. Veterans.
Press. Killing. All of this was unscripted. Then he backed off and showed
something like vulnerability. “It takes your heart a little bit.” He had
everyone enthralled.

“But the press,” he continued, “they always want to make it look as bad as
possible. These are bad people. They are bad, bad people.” The audience
looked back at the press platform and booed loudly. Trump mentioned the
press derisively many more times during his speech, later calling them
“liars”, “scumbags” and “bad human beings”. About the local newspaper, he
said, “Does anyone know what the hell the Sacramento Bee is? They were
actually very nice to me, which is amazing.”

He straddled this dichotomy throughout his speech: he claims to be at war
with the press, but his campaign’s success has been made possible by the
media’s relentless coverage of his every move. And though they are critical
of Trump, the media has profited greatly from the public’s fascination with
him. Trump bragged about how much coverage his campaign had been getting.
“We’re on the cover of literally every magazine,” he said. “Every magazine.
And oftentimes, we’re on the cover many, many times.”

“They say there are 11,000 people in the hangar,” he said, to cheers from
the audience. “Last night I watched as Bernie had a crowd of 3,000 people.
That’s not bad. That’s not bad. And the news media said, ‘Bernie Sanders
had this massive crowd of 3,000 people.’ You know what 3,000 people is?
It’s like a small audience, it’s like forget it. When we have a crowd like
this – look at this!” They cheered again.

The actual capacity of the hangar was 2,500, and that day it was less than
half full. But factual accuracy is not the point of Trump’s speeches. The
point is entertainment, and Trump delivers. Any given portion of his speech
contained a lively mix of boasts, jokes, grievances, name-calling, threats,
exaggerations and non sequiturs – all of it delivered theatrically, without
notes and with great comic timing, aided by his guttural accent and his
gift for crude but memorable language. Over the next 44 minutes, he had
vivid and unvarnished things to say about the North American Free Trade
Agreement (“a total disaster”) and the World Trade Organisation (“a
catastrophe”). He said the elected leaders in Washington are “stupid,
stupid people” and that Hillary Clinton was “a person with absolutely no
natural talent”. The fact that she was allowed to run at all, given her
email imbroglio, was “a disgrace”.
[image: People listen to Trump speak at a campaign rally]
People listen to Trump speak at a campaign rally. Photograph: Lucy
Nicholson/Reuters

But at least half of his speech was about himself, and the various slights
inflicted upon him. He talked about how, during the early debates with his
Republican opponents, he preferred it when there was an odd number of
candidates. “It used to bother me when we had an even number. I said I want
an odd number! Because I want to be in the centre!” Even when he talked
about issues of national security or trade, often it was a way of getting
to a complaint about how this broader national issue affected Trump’s
personal business and wealth. Below is a word-for-word transcription of one
his rambles:

“We’re gonna bring your jobs back. We’re gonna make things so much better.
We’re not going to let these countries get away with what they’re doing.
They’re ripping you off. They’re taking your jobs. By the way, today. In
golf. Anybody see what happened? They moved the World Golf Championship,
which used to be Cadillac, a great sponsor by the way, Cadillac. They moved
the World Golf Championships from Miami to Mexico City. Can you believe it?
Think of it! So they moved the PGA Tour, moved the World Golf Championship
from Miami, where they’re furious, to Mexico City. Not good. But that’s OK.
Folks! It’s all going to be settled. You vote for Donald Trump, this stuff
is all gonna stop.”

Did he mention that he is the owner of the golf course in Miami that has
traditionally hosted the World Golf Championship? He did not. Maybe
everyone knew. But the cheers were loud, though it wasn’t clear what
everyone was cheering about. What was going to stop? What was going to be
settled? Was it the return of the World Golf Championship to Miami? Did it
have something to do with Cadillac?

“You like that airplane?” he said, jabbing a thumb behind him. “It’s good,
right? Made in America. Made in America. Boeing.” The crowd roared and
looked at the plane. On closer examination, there was something strange
about the plane. It looked like it had come from another decade. And that
decade was the 1980s. Trump’s name was emblazoned on it in a font called
Akzidenz-Grotesk, a typeface popular 30 years ago. Its tail bore a giant
“T”, rendered in a way that implied it had been striped by high winds. This
was another design motif from the 80s, usually used on children’s
basketball shoes.

And then it came together. I’d been watching Trump’s speech, hearing the
crowd laugh and cheer and have a good time in the early evening sun, and
all along I’d been trying to put my finger on what the rally reminded me
of. And now, my head back in the 1980s, it hit me: Andrew Dice Clay
<http://www.andrewdiceclay.com/>. He might not be familiar to audiences
outside the US, but in the 80s, for a few years, he was the most popular
comedian in America. He would come out looking like the Fonz – in jeans, a
leather jacket and a white T-shirt – and he’d tell jokes that were
politically incorrect but often very funny. His posture was that of a
braggy thug from Brooklyn, saying crude things on the street corner. At the
height of his fame, he could sell out stadiums.

It was just an act, of course. But like a lot of comedy, the appeal is in
the forbidden delight in hearing highly inappropriate things spoken into a
microphone. We can’t believe someone said that, on stage, or behind a
podium, to so many.

For a year now, pollsters, the media and the world at large have been
baffled by the fact that no incendiary or asinine thing Trump says or
tweets seems to make any dent in his appeal. He has broadcast countless
statements that would sink any other candidate. (In his Sacramento speech,
he repeatedly called the US a “third world country”, which would be the end
of any other campaign in American history.) And for a year we’ve all
assumed that when Trump said something xenophobic or sexist or offensive to
the world’s billion Muslims, or the world’s billion Catholics (remember
when he took on the pope?), or to the world’s 3.5 billion women, it must
mean that his supporters agree with his newest outrageous statement.
[image: Trump poses with fire-fighters after the rally]
Trump poses with firefighters after the rally. Photograph: Dave Eggers

But this is not true. Something very different is happening. His supporters
are not really listening to anything he says. They cheer when he says he’ll
help the veterans, they cheer when he says he’ll build a wall, but
ultimately they do not care what he says. They don’t care if he actually
will build a wall. If Trump decided, tomorrow, to reverse himself on the
idea of building a wall, his supporters would shrug and their support would
not waver. He has been for gun control and against gun control. He has
stated his support for Planned Parenthood and for the idea of criminal
punishment for women who seek abortions. He has called the Iraq war, and
most of our adventures in the Middle East, mistakes, but has said he would
carpet bomb Isis. He has reversed himself on nearly every major issue,
often in the same week, and has offered scant specifics on anything in
particular – though in Sacramento, about infrastructure, he did say, “We’re
gonna have new roads, bridges, all that stuff”.

His supporters do not care. Nothing in Trump’s platform matters. There is
no policy that matters. There is no promise that matters. There is no
villain, no scapegoat, that matters. If, tomorrow, he said that Canadians,
not Mexicans, were rapists and drug dealers, and the wall should be built
on that border, no one would blink. His poll numbers would not waver.
Because there are no positions and no statements that matter to them. There
is only the man, the name, the brand, the personality they have seen on
television.

Believing that Trump’s supporters are all fascists or racists is a grave
mistake. This day in Sacramento presented a different picture, of a
thousand or so regular people who thought it was pretty cool how Trump
showed up in a plane with his name on it. How naughty it was when he called
the president “stupid”. How funny it was when he said the word “huge” the
peculiar way he does, without the “h” (the audience yelled back “uuuuge!”,
laughing half with him, half at him). In the same way we rooted for Clay a
few years ago when he showed up as an actual actor in a Woody Allen movie,
the audience at a Trump rally is thinking, *How funny would it be if this
guy were across the table from **Angela Merkel*
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/angela-merkel>*? That would be classic.*

Americans who have voted for Trump in the primaries have done so not
because they agree with all, or any, of his statements or promises, but
because he is an entertainment. He is a loud, captivating distraction and a
very good comedian. His appeal is aided by these rallies, and by media
coverage, and both are fuelled not by substance but by his willingness to
say crazy shit. Corey Lewandowski
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/01/corey-lewandowski-donald-trump-campaign-manager-strategy>,
Trump’s campaign manager, has insisted that they “let Trump be Trump” and
the wisdom of the strategy is undeniable. As long as he continues to say
crazy shit, he will continue to dominate the news and will continue to
attract crowds. The moment he ceases to entertain – to say crazy shit – he
will evaporate.

Or even before that, people could just get bored. This happened in
Sacramento. Just over halfway through his speech, people started leaving.
Twenty-five minutes in, he had begun to repeat himself, and he’d started
looking down at the podium, reading dubious statistics about Sacramento’s
economic situation. People didn’t care. At one point he read from an
article he said he’d clipped from a newspaper. He was getting too specific,
and the entertainment value was sinking.

People from the front of the crowd started making their way back, and out.
It started with the elderly woman in the Veterans of Foreign Wars hat. She,
and the two people helping her, squeezed their way through the throng and
into the darkness of the hangar. This began a steady flow of the departing.
These people had arrived at 4pm, had waited three hours and now, at 7.30pm,
they were leaving. Trump was still talking, but they were not worried about
missing anything he would say, because they did not care. They had seen
him, heard the zingers, taken a picture or two, and now they were heading
to the parking lot, to get a head start on the traffic.

By the time Trump finished, there was no one behind me. Most of the hangar
was empty. The only people left were the few hundred outside, pressed
against the barricades, waiting for him to sign their posters and hats. As
he moved down the line, as the sun finally set and the night finally
cooled, the song playing, just as poignantly as it had when he arrived, was
“Tiny Dancer”.

Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down on sheets of linen
You had a busy day today.

• Dave Eggers is the author of *The Circle*
<https://bookshop.theguardian.com/circle-5.html/?utm_source=editoriallink&utm_medium=merch&utm_campaign=article>
and *A Hologram for the King*
<https://bookshop.theguardian.com/hologram-for-the-king.html/?utm_source=editoriallink&utm_medium=merch&utm_campaign=article>.
His forthcoming book is *Heroes of the Frontier*
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/books/dave-eggers-journeys-into-alaska-in-heroes-of-the-frontier.html?_r=0>
.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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