Couple Wears Make Obama President Again Hat at Trump Rally

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Rally 1

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Love

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Missoula, Montana

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Thursday 18 October

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T he instant yous nourish your commencement Trump rally you are confronted by an uncomfortable truth: to figure out what'south happening you have to acknowledge the love. It may not be pure and selfless. It may be egotistic and at times fifty-fifty threatening. But love is very much in the air.

Xx minutes into his speech in Missoula, Montana, Trump breaks from the autocue and exclaims: "I love you likewise." He scours the crowd – "Who said that? Who said that?" – until he locates the person who has just declared love for him.

"It's finally a woman," he exclaims. "Yous know, I become information technology from the men all the time. So far every guy that said 'I honey you', they're simply not my type."

Locker-room talk, merely it works. It sparks a commonage guffaw from Trump supporters. Women chortle, men squirm. Information technology's a lovefest.

Trump uses the word "dear" repeatedly. He loves Montanans, he tells them. Such "loyal, hardworking, incredible patriots". Later in the speech, he uses "dearest" in reference to the air hangar where the rally is held, the people of Maine, his starting time lady, his hair, a couple of local Congress members and hunting and guns.

His supporters repay his love – with interest. They begin forming a line well before dawn that by midday snakes around a giant field nether the state'due south legendary big sky. The procession is ablaze with red Brand America Nifty Again hats and national flags draped over shoulders amid a festive mood non unlike a funfair.

Francie Bruneau, 58, has driven 200 miles from Spokane, Washington, and will represent 7 hours in line before Trump appears. "He speaks to me," she says. "He'due south similar your friend next door, someone you can become to the pub with and drink beer."

"He doesn't potable," someone interjects.

Much has been written about Trump rallies, and the nighttime forces they invoke. But today the crowd has the character of a family unit outing of proud Americans, happy to be among their ain in a state that Trump won in 2016 by 20 points.

"Yous can run across the dearest right here," says Robin Pedersen, 56, a equus caballus trainer from Florence, Montana. "Everybody'southward ceremonious, everybody's getting along."

Under Montana'due south famous large heaven, Trump addresses thousands of his supporters. Photograph: Fred R Conrad/The Guardian

Further downwards the line Phil Zacha, 82, is wearing a T-shirt that articulates what many people volition say to me in the coming days. Information technology bears the words: "Trump: he says what I retrieve."

Tonight, his stump spoken communication is closely scripted and he largely cleaves to it. There'southward more swagger in his demeanor than there was in 2016 – and there was plenty so. Two years ago he was the insurgent candidate on an unlikely mission to disrupt. Now he is the achieved victor commandingly in accuse.

Here in this sealed terrarium of 8,000 loving supporters, far from the multiple dangers of Robert Mueller, legal threats from porn stars and debates over impeachment, he is in his element.

"I just walked in and a big potent guy grabbed me, it happens every time. And he said, 'Sir, Mr President, thank you so much for saving our land.'"

The president entices his followers to believe he is lavishing his dear on them. Merely it works both ways: he's as well drawing on their dear. The rally is his charging station, the place he goes to refuel his ego and his zealotry.

"We did it together, not me. I'k the spokesman," he says. "Past the way, how have I washed?"

The oversupply roars.

Tucked into the love, however, there is a menace that has also grown more pronounced since 2016.

I honey yous people, it seems to say, because yous hate my enemy.

Trump turns his beloved to Greg Gianforte, Montana's Republican member of Congress. In May 2017, Gianforte physically attacked the Guardian's political correspondent Ben Jacobs who was trying to ask him a question nigh healthcare reform, grabbing him by the lapels and throwing him violently to the ground.

Trump praises Gianforte for being a "tough cookie", "my kinda guy". He and so acts out the motions of someone torso-slamming some other. The hangar explodes with delight.

The slapstick display comes just hours later on new show has emerged that journalist and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi had been beheaded and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad to silence his criticism. Trump has nothing to say virtually that.

After the rally is over, I phone call Pedersen, the horse trainer, and inquire her what she thinks. She says that Trump "talked to every one of us individually, not equally a grouping. It was peaceful."

Peaceful. How then?

"I mean the positive energy I go from him. Feeling peaceful in there, feeling similar he has your back."

What about the body-slam?

"He was joking. We read it as a joke."

Was information technology appropriate for the US president to joke about a vehement assail on a fellow American?

"Probably not. But he did it, and I'thousand not offended by information technology."

Did you laugh?

"I chuckled."

---

T he peace Trump offers his people is a peace twinned with fear. It'south right there in the phrase stamped on the sea of ruby hats: Brand America Great Again. The slogan implies that the country is going to the dogs, and that only one man tin salvage it.

Hither that man comes, Marine One kicking upward a giant cloud of dust in the Arizonan desert. As he steps out of the helicopter, for a few precious moments Trump carries himself as president of the United States, with all the regalia of that office. Uniformed marines salute him. Secret Service agents scowl.

And then he disappears into the mass of v,000 devotees, popping up again in the heart of the crowd, transformed into apparently Donald Trump, man of the people, the guy who puts your fears into words.

Trump: he says what I retrieve.

"The radical Democrats want to plunge our country into a nightmare of gridlock, poverty and chaos, you lot know that. They want to impose socialism on our state, turn the states into another Venezuela, throw your borders broad open to deadly drugs and ruthless gangs. 'Come on in everybody! Come on in!'"

This is radioactive for American conservatives who fear illegal immigration more than than anything else. It is especially incendiary in the border state of Arizona, nowhere more so than where nosotros are this night – Mesa, an outpost of Phoenix that was home to Sheriff Arpaio's 24-year reign of terror against Hispanic undocumented immigrants.

Which came first: Trump's extremist vision of an immigrant dystopia, or the equally febrile fears of his followers? Who knows. But they make great bedfellows.

In the crowd is Shadow Lane, 42, a boutique owner from Cottonwood, Arizona. She has a Q drawn on her cheek for QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory network.

Trump supporter Shadow Lane sports the 'Q' for QAnon. Photograph: Fred R Conrad/The Guardian

I inquire her what America would be like in 2050 had Hillary Clinton beaten Trump. "Guatemala, a socialistic country," she replies, probably disruptive it with Venezuela (Republic of guatemala is currently run by a rightwing president who, like Lane, is an avowed Trump fan).

"Socialistic" is a word that comes up often. For David Stewart, 66, a retired teacher, that means a world in which "taxes and unemployment would become through the roof, the economy would plummet, there would be riots for nutrient and h2o". Racial tensions would be inflamed by Democrats seeking to "break the political system".

Why would they desire to do that?

"They desire power. Look it upward. President Bush said if you put the blacks on welfare they will vote Democratic for the remainder of their lives."

Only Bush was a Republican.

Stewart pauses. Then he says: "I don't remember."

Rick Novak, 57, a retired building foreman and Harley guy, comes up to me in the press pen saying he wants to come face to face with "simulated news". He sounds intimidating, until he throws me a large only-kidding smile.

What would happen to America were Trump not on the case? "People are going to become killed," he says. "Gang wars. Nosotros are going to get gang wars between white and black, whites and Mexicans. Nosotros could accept our own little Vietnam, right here."

A full-blown war, here in Arizona?

"We are under threat with Mexican people coming over the border. If we don't close it we are going to permit Isis come up in with the Mexicans."

A couple of days after, Fox News begins peddling the exact aforementioned conspiracy theory. Trump'due south favorite TV channel reports – without whatsoever evidence – that terrorist fighters of the Islamist grouping Isis have infiltrated the caravan of iii,500 Central American asylum seekers heading towards the The states border.

A couple of hours after that, Trump takes up the rallying cry, warning that "Heart Easterners" are hiding in the human convoy and declaring the situation a "national emergency".

After my week of rallies has ended, Trump takes his breathy effort to turn Americans' fears into electoral votes to new lengths. He orders more than 5,000 troops to exist sent to the United states edge to intercept the caravan – a ratio of more than one soldier per desperate, unarmed asylum seeker.

Then he says he volition cease with the flick of his pen the right to US citizenship for babies built-in in the United states – a flagrant violation of the 14th subpoena from a president who claims to be a stout defender of the United states constitution.

Back in Mesa, where Trump snarls angrily virtually "kick the criminals, the drug dealers and the terrorists the hell out of our country", the gratitude of his people is visceral.

Outside the air hangar, the world is a cruel and ugly identify. Here, inside, they are safe.

---

Westward hen Trump began his rallies in 2015, he insisted on choosing his own musical soundtrack: the Rolling Stones, Elton John, and Guns Northward' Roses played at loftier volume. (Mick Jagger has insisted Trump tin can't be stopped using Stones music, though that didn't prevent Pharrell Williams this week sending the president a cease-and-desist letter of the alphabet enervating he never again plays the song Happy.)

Three years on in Houston, Texas, the sound organisation blares out Village People'south Macho Man.

"Manlike, macho man / I gotta be a manlike man."

Is it irony? Is it bragging? Did the president hand-choice the melody? As with so much of Trump's complex aesthetics, y'all can't tell. If you had to estimate, you'd say both.

There's no doubt, though, that he likes to present himself every bit a potent homo. And a strongman.

That's obvious in Houston, the largest of the five rallies this week. With 16,000 people hailing their great leader inside the auditorium, and several more thousand outside, he is a large cat in heavy foam.

With every wave of affirmation, his chest visibly expands and his pose grows more martial: head back, lips puckered, shoulders square. He looks as though he were standing at inspection as the tanks whorl past at his cancelled military parade.

"I'm a nationalist!" he cries. He'due south fully enlightened of the storm he will provoke by using a term closely associated with US white supremacy. "We are not supposed to utilize that word," he tells his followers with a verbal wink.

It's strongman language. But then Trump is all about strongman language. Where Barack Obama used philosophical acrobatics to wow his base, Trump leans on words: pared downwards, thin, monosyllabic ones.

Democrats are evil, bad, lousy, ill, cuckoo socialists who produce mobs. Republicans are smashing, beautiful, tough, patriotic warriors who produce jobs.

Occasionally he'll let himself to stick two words together – imitation news, "Crooked Hillary", radical socialism. But he'll never identify himself above his supporters or make them experience inferior to him.

It'south the root of his force. It makes him ane of usa.

Custom-made cowboy boots. Photo: Fred R Conrad/The Guardian

In that location's some other source of Trump's strength among his people. You have to attend his rallies to know this – it does not transmit through Tv.

Humor.

Not sense of humor as it'southward normally delivered. He doesn't do gags, or side-splitting punch lines.

What he does do is riff, a sort of complimentary-class ranting. He goes on near "Pocahontas", his debasing name for the liberal U.s. senator Elizabeth Warren, and her Native American Deoxyribonucleic acid test. He calls Maxine Waters, the black Democratic congresswoman from California, a "low-IQ private".

The manner he tells it, with a cute "don't blame me" look on his confront, his arms outstretched, it comes across as funny. He's teasing u.s.a.. Some people laugh. Such is the infectiousness of laughter, others do and so besides.

Merely terminate and call up nigh what is happening here. The systematic demeaning of women, and the denigration of a person'south IQ in terms Trump reserves exclusively for African Americans – in front of a oversupply that is 99.viii% white. Through laughter, anybody is complicit.

It makes you wonder what the many women in the rally think of this. I talk to three groups of Texas women of different ages – one in her tardily 60s from Trinity; the 2nd in her 40s from Kingwood; and the final a pair of high school seniors from Baytown who are preparing to vote for the kickoff time.

There is remarkable unanimity. All three age groups say they run across Trump as a potent leader who keeps his promises and "gets things done".

All three give Brett Kavanaugh, the US supreme court justice, the benefit of the doubt in his searing confirmation procedure – they are convinced he did not sexually assault his accuser, Dr Christine Blasey Ford. In that location is also agreement across the generations that Trump has strengthened them.

"I exercise feel stronger equally a woman since Trump," says Stephanie Scott, 42, a stay-calm mum. "It's validation. I don't have to exist bullied into supporting Hillary Clinton whatever more just considering I'thou a woman; I have my own vocalisation."

The only chink of light betwixt the ages relates to Trump'due south vulgar sexual comments and behavior, such equally the way he recently called Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor alleging an thing, "Horseface". The sixtysomethings recall it's "piddlin' stuff".

But one of the high-schoolhouse students, Priscila Garcia, 17, doesn't like it. She recoiled at the Access Hollywood tape in 2016 in which he boasted that he would "take hold of 'em by the pussy".

"Him proverb that makes me and other women uncomfortable," she says.

There the disagreement ends. Garcia may not similar Trump's loutish remarks, simply she remains firmly in his camp. "He's a amend leader than he is a person," she says. "I don't agree with his personality, but he gets stuff done."

---

O n the morning of the quaternary rally, the outside globe blasts its mode into Trumpland. Shortly later on 10am, as CNN anchors are telling their viewers near a serial of piping bombs mailed to the Clintons, the Obamas and to George Soros, they take to rush off air because the network has received its ain explosive device.

At the same time, Jacob Spaeth and iii of his buddies are lining upwardly in a field in Mosinee, Wisconsin. They are all wearing the same distinctive red T-shirt. It bears a cartoon sketch of a smiling Trump urinating profusely over the CNN logo.

Today, after the CNN pipe bomb became headline news, a merchant says he's sold about 15 of them in quick succession at $xx each.

Spaeth, a xix-yr-old higher student, doesn't desire to annotate on the bombs. But he's happy to hash out CNN.

"It's not just CNN, it's the whole media. They are very unfair to Trump. They're manipulating kids, telling them that Trump is a horrible guy and that he wants bad things."

The shirt with Trump peeing on the CNN logo. Photo: Fred R Conrad/The Guardian

Spaeth never watches CNN – he occasionally sees clips of it on Facebook. He gets his information from Infowars, the website of Alex Jones. Jones, a conspiracy theorist, is on the record as saying ix/11 was a government set-upwardly and that the 2012 Newtown school shooting in which 20 children were killed was fabricated. Within hours he volition be broadcasting that this calendar week'south pipe bombs are also a hoax.

Spaeth embodies one of the most puzzling aspects of my week in Trumpland. Throughout the five rallies, I talk to scores of people, all of whom, without exception, are welcoming and pleasant. Yet hours later, in the force per unit area-cooker of the rally, they will plough on me and my mainstream media colleagues and hurl insults at u.s.a..

Spaeth admits that when he went to a Trump rally in Minnesota last month he took part in the finger-jabbing and the chanting of "CNN sucks". It fabricated him feel happy to be able to limited his feelings so openly among like-minded folk. "I don't see it every bit bullying," he says.

In that location'due south only one caption for this blueprint of behavior: that Trump enables skilful, civil Americans to metamorphose into media baiters. "Those people, imitation news," the president says sneeringly at almost every rally, pointing to the caged pen where reporters are cooped upwardly during his speeches.

It's a trigger mechanism: as shortly as he says it, the chants begin. "CNN sucks! CNN sucks!" Many of the people chanting are also laughing – information technology's that sense of humour thing again. Just CNN is taking no chances: they bring private security guards to every rally.

With the wound of the pipe bombs so fresh, Trump refrains from the usual "fake news" routine. He as well holds dorsum from personal attacks on Democrats, though in the other rallies I nourish I hear Trump denigrate by name five of the 14 targets of the pipe bombs (Cory Booker, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Soros and Waters).

A Trump supporter makes his feelings known. Photograph: Fred R Conrad/The Guardian

This night, he talks about the need to "bring our nation together". Information technology's an extraordinarily cordial message coming from him. But listen closer. His telephone call to unity is in fact a veiled assail on his political enemies.

In the name of "peace and harmony", he tells politicians to stop treating their opponents – for which read Trump – as "morally defective", and he references the "mob" – for which read Democrats. Remarkably, he is actually mocking the very concept of national unity while calling for it.

It is not until the mean solar day after my week of Trump rallies ends in North Carolina that the consequences become fully apparent of a nation whose civilian population owns vastly more guns than any other being led by a man who whips upwardly racial fears and mocks national unity. On Saturday 27 October, 2 hours after he had posted a rant against "invaders that kill our people", Robert Bowers enters a synagogue in Pittsburgh, pulls out an AR-15 style assail rifle and at least three handguns, and kills xi Jewish worshippers.

Within a few hours of the Pittsburgh assault Trump is back at his side by side rally in Illinois promising "strong borders, no offense, and no caravans". Within 48 hours of the assail he has renewed his unfounded claims that "very bad people" are mixed in with the caravan and that the "fake news media" is the "enemy of the people".

Only those events nonetheless lie in the future. Tonight in Wisconsin, the crowd are focused on only one thing – hearing their leader. It includes Steve Spaeth (no relation), xl, who runs a home exteriors company in West Bend. I inquire him who he regards equally his political enemies, and whether "hate" is likewise strong a give-and-take.

"Not at all," he says. "I have a deep and absolute disgust for these human being beings."

Which ones?

He rattles off CNN, Soros, Clinton, Waters, Booker, "Pocahontas" AKA Elizabeth Warren, and others.

Why do yous hate them?

"They want to turn America into a socialistic country. Information technology's icky."

I ask Spaeth how far he is prepared to take his hatred. In reply, he tells a story. The other day he talked to his sister, who is liberal and votes Democratic. He said to her: "If there is a civil war in this country and yous were on the wrong side, I would have no trouble shooting you lot in the face."

Y'all must be joking, I say.

"No I am not. I dear my sister, we get on great. But she has to know how passionate I am near our president."

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