My Long, Strange Trip to Madison Square Garden to Meet the Trumpies

The Trump rally in Madison Sq. Backyard on Sunday was my final probability to see the person in motion earlier than the election. So although the organizers had rejected my request for a media move (what, The Nation?), my husband and I made a decision to go anyway. Sadly, after we acquired to the Penn Station subway station, the place was packed, and the police, of whom there have been many, had blocked off each exit however one. It took us ages to get out of there. As soon as exterior, we had no thought the place to go. For some time we stood in a protracted line that turned out to be reserved for VIPs. “How did you get to be a VIP?” I requested a number of individuals, who appeared to do not know. “My pal organized it,” stated one girl with a shrug. We walked to thirty fourth and sixth and joined the regular-people line. It was even longer. A lot for the try by some mischievous Dems to sabotage the occasion by signing up and never going.

The very first thing I seen was what number of Black and brown individuals had been there—a number of Hispanics, greater than a sprinkling of Black individuals and Asians. After all there have been loads of white individuals, together with elegant Jap European ladies and their beefy husbands, younger Orthodox Jewish males (the place had been the ladies?), and loud younger males who burst out frequently with shouts of “USA! USA!” However the image you will have of Trump rallies as all-white fiestas didn’t maintain true.

The primary particular person I talked with was a Black girl holding an infinite American flag over which she’d draped a white embroidered tallit, a Jewish prayer scarf. Her three most vital points had been immigration, obligatory vaccination, and “boys within the women’ toilet.” She claimed that her 11-year-old daughter had been informed in class the right way to put on rolled-up socks subsequent to her vagina to simulate male genitalia. She was fervently anti-abortion, although her then-boyfriend had urged her to finish her being pregnant. She additionally informed me she had goals by which God informed her what was going to occur. For instance, two weeks earlier than Trump was shot at in Butler, Pennsylvania, God informed her there could be an try on his life.

The following was a Colombian American girl who stated she was 82 and had been in america since she was 2. Her English was not nice, particularly contemplating that she would have grown up and gone to high school right here, however what she informed me was clear: Below Trump, her transportation enterprise was doing nice—gasoline was low cost, taxes had been low—however now, thanks partly to “that silly Obamacare,” it was struggling. I requested her how she felt about Trump’s many insults to Latin American immigrants. Like everybody I interviewed, she simply didn’t absorb something that contradicted her view: “Trump loves the Spanish individuals!”

Subsequent up, a younger Christian, anti-abortion Korean American girl in a trendy grey MAGA hat. She was simply the nicest particular person on the earth. We bonded instantly over being small ladies in a sea of taller individuals. She informed me she labored from dwelling doing one thing on the Web for NYU however was reluctant to say extra, presumably as a result of she was growing her personal on-line enterprise, the character of which she was additionally reluctant to reveal. Like many Trumpies I’ve met, she had gone means down the rabbit gap of other details, which she discovered by following far-right commentators on the Web. She believed that the FBI and Nancy Pelosi had orchestrated January 6. She believed that an outdated girl was now in jail for strolling by the Capitol on that day. She believed that the jury had discovered Trump responsible of raping E. Jean Carroll as a result of they had been threatened with bodily hurt by, amongst anonymous others, Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg. What in regards to the many sexist issues Trump has stated? “So many males discuss like that,” she stated, with a faint smile. Though her dad and mom had been immigrants, she supported Trump’s plan to deport thousands and thousands of them: Her dad and mom had waited years to come back right here legally, in any case. Once I identified that most of the undocumented had been searching for asylum, she stated, sure, however their appointments had been 5 years sooner or later, so they only whff! ran away.

Standing close by was an outdated white man from Cape Might, New Jersey, who described himself as a builder. He informed me that the flooding in North Carolina was the fault of Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband. Two weeks earlier than the floods, Emhoff had purchased permits for lithium mines within the state, however individuals had refused to promote their homes so the mines may very well be constructed. Then got here the floods, which destroyed the homes—now the property may very well be purchased up for subsequent to nothing. A bit too handy, these floods, eh?

I requested his daughter, a yoga instructor and life coach, what she wished Trump to do. “I simply need it to be like 2020,” she replied. In the meantime, a younger white girl was shouting, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” whereas dancing with an indication that learn, “Say No to the Hoe.”

I want I had had an opportunity to satisfy this energetic feminine misogynist, however at that time, we had been knowledgeable that the Backyard was full, and we began the lengthy and complicated trek again to sixth Avenue. I’d requested a really tall younger man to take a photograph of the gang from as excessive up as he might carry my telephone. It exhibits the road filled with individuals all the way in which to MSG, two lengthy blocks away. (When individuals say the Backyard wasn’t full, don’t imagine them.) This obliging younger man turned out to be a just lately employed reporter for The Every day Caller, a conservative outlet based by Tucker Carlson. His most important problem appeared to be a ban on gasoline stoves that Harris was supposedly pushing, a claim rated false by The Washington Publish.

I got here away bewildered from my afternoon with the Trumpies. We discuss quite a bit about individuals who stay in a blue bubble, and that’s honest—lots of us do. However these (largely) pleasant abnormal individuals stay in a bubble too—of TikTok movies, far-right YouTubers, and web sites like, um, The Every day Caller. They’re deeply alienated from customary sources of knowledge. For them, that one thing is reported in The New York Instances or The Washington Publish is all of the extra cause to seek out it suspicious. It’s a paranoid imaginative and prescient, by which the vice chairman’s husband controls the climate (nicely, he is Jewish) and the federal government goes to come back into your condo and take your range. And but they appeared completely regular—nicely, possibly not the girl who thought God talked to her in goals. A few of my pals thought I might be risking violence by mixing with the gang—however individuals didn’t appear postpone once I stated I used to be for Harris and was simply there out of curiosity.

After all, I don’t know what goes on of their minds. Do they actually simply tune out Trump’s many racist, misogynist statements, his lies, his dismissal of democratic norms? Or would an extended dialog reveal that they agreed with him that immigrants are rapists and criminals who come from shithole nations and eat their neighbors’ cats and canine, that Democrats are the enemy inside, and that Harris is not only a politician they disagree with however a lazy, low-IQ one who slept her means into authorities and has no thought what she’s doing?

A number of individuals informed me Trump loves them. Certainly, he says so on a regular basis. The day after the rally, I acquired a textual content message from Trump: THIS TEXT IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. You’re getting it as a result of I really like you, Katha. Most politicians don’t discuss like that. It’s a uncommon Dem who would say Harris really loves them. Perhaps there’s an emotional bond between Trump and his followers that supersedes the content material of something he says. Perhaps the very issues we mock him for—his long-winded rambling speeches, his awkwardness, his orange hair and make-up, his oddly distant relation with Melania—make him appear endearingly human. Perhaps the one factor that issues to them is that he acknowledges and validates their nostalgia for that supposedly less complicated time when the US was on the prime and it appeared like their lives had been going to be OK. On the way in which out of the gang, I ran right into a youngish Black man promoting MAGA hats and T-shirts. I requested him if he was for Trump or this was extra of a enterprise factor. “Oh, I’m for him,” he stated with an enormous smile. “Trump loves individuals!” I requested him what individuals imply once they say Trump would make America nice once more. When was America nice? “Everytime you had been blissful,” he stated. “Trump needs it to be like that.”