So I Went To A Trump Rally...

So not unusually for me I found myself feeling empty, unfulfilled and in a desperate need of change of scenery. I soon heard about the upcoming rally Trump was holding in Waco, TX to kick off his 2024 presidental run and my eyes lit up. I had once dreamed of doing a project where I interview white supremacists and other extremists and write a book about it and I thought making my way to Waco to interview folks would fill a void in me, an itch to delve into the world of journalism/activism/politics/writing in a visceral on the ground way.

So I packed up a few things, got on a greyhound bus and forged a new adventure. While slightly dissapointed that the woman sitting next to me showed no interest in making any small talk I sat and listened to Lana Del Rey smiling to myself about the opportunity that lie ahead and what I planned to make of it.

As soon as my Lyft arrived at the field behind the Waco Regional Airport I walked out in the heat and instantly took it all in: it was what felt like miles and miles of booths selling various types of Trump paraphenelia, hoards of Trump supporters with outlandish pro Trump clothing, accessories, Truck signs, etc., food trucks, administrative booths, and of course some press scattered throughout the scene.

To my dissapointment after a couple of low quality videos the storage on my phone was full and I opted to record voice messages instead and the responses varied slightly some more outlandish than others:

So I tended to be drawn to people with particularly eccentric t shirts and I approached an "anti communist" originally from Canada who was wearing an F Joe Biden/Let's Go Brandon shirt with matching flag who said, "I support Trump because he supports my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

"Interesting," I responded,"so you see Trump as a really faithful Christian?"

"Yes."

" So, uh, how would you compare America to Canada?"

" Right now?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Canada's worse than we are total socialism--- total communism now"

I looked at him quizzically but not surprised, "communism---interesting"

He went on to say, "anybody that flew in there got put in quarantine concentration camps."

He went on a spiel for some time about how Canada's covid protocols were tantamount to holocaust style concentration camps and after a bit I cut it off and thanked him for his time.

After some conversations I walked up to a couple:

"What does the MAGA movement mean to you"

"Freedom"

"Freedom from...?" I asked

"Freedom from tyranny..."

"Do you think Joe Biden is tyrannical?" I asked the woman

"Yes!"

"How?"

"He's an idiot!"

"How's he an idiot?"

"This is a little complicated" and she walked off, I sense, feeling a bit frustrated.

So after some wandering around I found a man with an "Arrest Alvin Bragg" t shirt of course referencing the DA investigating Trump from Manhattan.

"Talk to me about that shirt."

"So the shirt speaks for itself, arrest Alvin Bragg...he needs to be arrested immediately,"

"Okay for what?"

"For what?...Treason, obstruction of justice, election interference, fraud, lying to the American people, lying to a grand jury, treason..."

"You are going after a president candidate of the United States, Donald Trump clearly for political reasons, you are using witnesses that are not credible---Stormy Daniels is not credible, Michael Cohen is not credible, you're using witnesses to bring up and old case about money from eight years ago, around the time Donald trump is running for President..."

"Sir would you be disuaded by the fact that Michael Cohen already went to prison for this charge," I pushed back slightly, "so if there was accountability for him you don't think there should be accountability for Trump?"

"Michael Cohen's the one who made the payment to Stormy Daniels...to pay her off not Donald Trump."

"But wasn't it under the direction of Donald Trump?"

"I didn't see that did you?"

It became clear that there was no more point in arguing, no matter how soberly, respectfully or tepidly I spoke he would never listen to my side---time to move on.

I'm always drawn to people of color and I spotted a woman who appeared to be an Asian immigrant and of course I asked her where she was from.

"Vietnam" she smiled.

"Sin Jao, Bang Quay Cuom" (I'm trying to learn some basic Vietnamese)

"Cam Ung" She responded

"Why does the MAGA movement speak to you personally?,"

" You know," she said in heavily accented, somewhat broken English, "everything fake news my friend say...he was right, everything he say or do"

" What was Trump right about?"

" It's everything better before, its problem now"

She went to talk about the border and illegal immigration being such a problem, I shook my head at the irony and wished her well.

I then approached a friendly looking Black Trumpist, possibly in his 60s.

" What does the MAGA movement mean to you?"

"The MAGA movement means---it means America," he goes on, "America coming together as one, that's what it's all about America coming together as one, no more division, no more seperation, no more racism, just being together as Americans, that's what it is"

"And as a black conservative a lot of people say there's an inherent contradiction with that, like the Republican party doesn't serve black interests the way the Democratic party does---what do you say to those that say that?"

"Well to be honest with you if you look at the Democratic party, they go back to everything that America's not about...they were the party of segregation...and if you look at history most of the people they was involved with were also members of the Klu Klux Klan."

" But LBJ was the one who signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act into law and he was a Democrat."

"Yes, he was, but if you look back into what that bill done to the Americans today that would be a fault message."

"So are you against the Civil Rights Act?"

"...no I'm not against it but is it equal for everybody? What you do is you have a tendency to seperate one group from another group and that causes division."

"So you think the Civil Rights Act causes division"

"In some ways it does," he goes on, "well because I'm black I can get hired in a position over another person---no, that's not equal...the method that they use is wrong because you can't set another group in front of another group.

He kindly thanked me for the interview and then made me promise to send him a copy of the article once I was done with it.

I did a few more vanilla interviews then I was starving and headed towards a food truck, the line was insanely long so I was determined to make good use of my time.

I noticed a man wearing a shirt referencing Vince Foster's (from the Clinton administration) suicide.

"So tell me about your T shirt"

" Says Clinton's they can't suicide us all"

" Are you referring to the Vince Foster incident?"

" I'm referering to ALL of the people who have died that are all friends with the Clintons, all of them"

"So do you believe the Clintons are---?"

" Evil? Yes, they are extremely evil"

" So you believe they're responsible for all those murders? You believe they were murders?"

Referring to the Vince Foster suicide, " Its kind of hard to not have a gun at the crime scene and be shot in the back while you're hung right?" All of those details are completely baseless of course.

"So what evidence do you have to prove that they're murderers?"

" You can look it up anywhere---google it."

To the left of me was a woman in pretty boots and a deep fixation with Dr. Fauci.

" You know he's been killing people for 40 years, Prime Minister Modi even banned him from India for giving all of the kids polio."

She went on for about fifteen minutes in line about how he kills babies, he was a mass murderer/monster, etc. Then, I don't know how but the conversation then turned to drag queens and before I knew it my fries were ready and it was time to line up to see Trump.

It was a gruelling 4-5 hours in a barely moving line in the Waco heat interrupted only by vendors coming through selling "Make America Great Again" hats and overpriced waters.

Eventually though I made it in the arena, and quietly pushed my way to the front as excited by the spectacle as any hard core Trump supporter. My heart skipped a beat every time I thought 45 was going to walk on stage. Perhaps I was in awe of his fame---or infamy, perhaps it was something in the air.

And I realized that every neoliberal who called this movement a cult was right, if I with opposite political views could be this enthralled by a Trump rally how could those with right wing or borderline views be influenced? How could that influence our youth and country?

I also realized that the kindess that the overwhelming majority of Trumpists showed me that day was indicitative of the fact that they weren't bigoted monsters that were destroying the country as sometimes seen by our side. They were in large part misguided victims of a methodical misinformation campaign and that the project of unifying our country has promise and is more necessary than ever.