At his Tuesday night rally in West Bend, Wisconsin, Donald Trump made a request that was more than a little strange, given the context. He implored a crowd of all-white faces for “the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today.” The tweens in front of me, in their matching cut-off jean shorts and red, white, and blue “Make America Great” trucker hats, seemed bored and pivoted around their orange-tanned, prepubescent legs to take another selfie. An older woman behind me, her white and blonde hair pulled back in a thick claw clip, let out a meager hoot and sat back down in her wheelchair. She’d stand back up again once Donald returned to the issues dearer to her heart: immigration, respect for blue lives, and the crookedness of Hillary and the “media-donor-political complex” apparently rigged in Hillary’s favor.
But the bulk of Donald Trump’s rally was geared towards the African American voter: towards the black families and youths so profoundly failed by so many systems. His pitch to African Americans came fresh on the heels of an especially tense long weekend in Milwaukee: the fatal police shooting of a black man, the subsequent riots, fires, and police targetings, and an enforced 10 PM curfew. Unsurprisingly, he started with his usual “Law and Order” spiel, as if a Donald Trump presidency would be some simplified, Apprentice-style spin-off of the Dick Wolf series. Yet, Trump strayed from his usual script, and instead aimed most of his vitriol at the Democrats for their systematic failure to protect impoverished black communities. “The African American community has been taken for granted for decades by the Democratic Party,” he said, citing the many structural injustices minorities face on the daily. In other words, it’s not just America, or once great industrial cities, or the white anxiety-filled suburbs that are in need of protection, but the inner city, full of its impoverished single mother families and failing school systems.
The plight of minorities isn’t exactly Trump’s usual message, and there are some pretty obvious explanations for his targeting of African American communities. Sure, he’s trying to pick off some Bernie supporters – all the talk of “rigged” systems is fairly obviously geared towards accomplishing just that. He’s also desperately trying to improve upon his dismal polling numbers for black voters. But, one wonders how easily this new narrative – that Democrats have betrayed poor black families – fits in with the rest of whatever Trump is selling to his fan-base. How would Trump’s supporters, who have been drawn to him not in spite of but because of his avowed rejection of “political correctness,” react to this attempt to widen his political base?
West Bend is one of Milwaukee’s northern suburbs, a 94.8% White community just off of 45 that’s buttressed by multiple highway-visible Harley Davidson chain stores. The rally met at the Washington County Fair Park Conference Center, a smallish complex surrounded by rolling hills. An old barn faced the Center’s makeshift, front-lawn parking lot. A farmyard smell ― manure, hay, and cows ― mingled with the odor of stale cigarettes and hairspray. It was a sea of red hats and Packers shirts, one person even donning a cheese-head with Trump’s infamous comb-over glued on top. There were definite family units scattered across the Center: parents forcing their teenaged children to pose for photo-ops, elderly couples holding hands in the eight row bleachers at the edge of the room. There were more portable oxygen-tanks per square foot than I’d ever seen before, outside of maybe a hospital. Groups of girls with straightened hair, black leggings, and very orange foundation huddled without any obvious political overtures. A twenty-something bro tucked his “Trump That Bitch!” tee into whale-embroidered shorts. A young mother outside the Porta-Potty in a bright pink shirt and cut-off shorts took a cigarette break with her five-or -so year old daughter, her sunglasses mirroring in blue the line of people outside the fence that snaked around to the parking lot with its shirt- and button-vendors. A group of tweens – four girls and one boy wearing another “Trump That Bitch” shirt! – busily sent Snapchat-filtered selfies to “their crew” who managed to score better spots inside the Center. Yet, of all the hundreds of people I saw that night, I only found four people of color, all of whom were selling “Hillary Sucks But Not Like Monica!” tees outside the rally. Once inside, I didn’t see a single non-white face.
The media was the common theme of the night for Trump’s audience, even if not the central occupation of Trump’s speech. Two separate conversations on the media’s filtering of reality competed for my attention while I waited in line for the bathroom. Two women, standing somewhere in the expansive line behind me, were especially bothered by Trump’s lower polling numbers despite claiming its irrelevance: “I don’t think he’s down in the polls at all. It’s manufactured by the media.” A man in front of me concurred, suggesting that CNN would label Trump as pro skin cancer if Trump said it’s a beautiful, sunny day outside. Back inside, where I stationed myself up against the railing near where Trump was expected to arrive, a man with long ponytail of reddish brown hair sneered, “There’s that damn media,” pointing to the coiffed and airbrushed group of reporters in the middle row bleachers, their thin bodies outlined in the intense glow of the camera’s spotlight. On the ponytail guy’s shirt was a large eagle soaring over an American flag, clutching in its sharp talons a gun. NRA. I tried to obscure my little purple notebook with the large, sharp-edged TRUMP PENCE sign I was given upon entry, suddenly aware that my anonymous neighbors may not appreciate my observations and recordings. “There’s probably some of them even planted,” Ponytail’s wife or gf said, nodding her permed head in my direction.
Yet the people I met seemed to be a far cry from what I had expected to find at the rally. Most were civil – boring, even – more Dad-core than neo-Nazi. The feeling in the air was like one before a concert or a performance: like, what will that zany Trump do or say tonight. I overheard one man confide to another that his 84 year old mother now “can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning” to find out what trouble Trump had gotten himself into the night before. “What will he say today?!” seemed to be the rally’s motto. A man from Naperville, IL in a peach Columbia shirt and jeans cracked jokes on Trump’s infamous wall, as if distancing himself from the proposition’s inanity. I passed the time waiting in the sweltering, un air-conditioned crowd with him, his friend also from Naperville, and an elderly, wheelchair-bound couple. TRUMP PENCE signs were now largely being used as fans. Naperville guy number two tucked his Ipad into the back of his jean shorts and complained about the uselessness of his vote, given that he lives in IL. The group of Snapchatting tweens returned behind us. It was 7:22 – Trump was expected to speak at 7:30 – and the crowd was getting tired, hot.
“Donald’s my nigga!” hooted the tween boy.
“Shut up! That’s, like, still a bad word,” hissed his pretty companion.
#
By 8:25 or so, the mood had decidedly changed. A few state representatives had given a couple speeches – the national anthem was belted out with the expected oscillations between head and chest voice – but Trump still hadn’t arrived, and it was getting hotter. The same set of six or so songs – including Pavarotti’s booming version of “Nessun Dorma” and the Rolling Stones “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – had already been repeated, in full, multiple times. An attractive, black-haired, square-jawed official walked up to the mic at 8:38 to meet the loudest boos he’d probably ever received in his life. The smell wasn’t just body odor – around 8:40 I isolated it as being like a really bad foot odor. EMS roamed up and down the walkway alongside sheriffs and secret service. A guy in a white shirt with one tan knee-high sock gave up, left our spot and (presumably) went home. Naperville guy number one shook his head, and said “The campaign’s gotta be smarter.” At 8:42 the crowd started chanting “Where is Trump?” A short man with a silver mustache and green shirt, suddenly began insulting a tall woman who had been standing in front of him for hours. “Like I wanted to stare at your back all night,” he yelled, the top of his head only barely meeting the ends of her dyed jet-black hair. The older woman in her wheelchair next to me, with her more modest “President Donald Trump” pin, caught me mid-yawn and in the process of removing my sweat-laden jean jacket from my arm-fat. “Don’t worry, dear, you’ll really enjoy this,” she told me, and then, finally, at 8:53 Rudy Guiliani appeared and the show began.
#
But what exactly did this sweet old lady mean when she said I’d really enjoy Trump’s speech? What had lead all these mostly not-politically motivated people to wait in crowds for four hours to hear speeches they could watch on youtube the next day?
I found what seems to be at least some part of the answer. It wasn’t during the parts of Trump’s speech when he lamented the plight of African Americans or asked for their vote. It wasn’t when Trump mentioned Hillary’s exploitation of black voters, nor was it when Trump, with his usual dose of hyperbole, said that a future President Hillary Clinton would be “the most pessimistic thing I can possibly imagine.” Instead, it was when he returned to that very pessimism – to the fears and resentments of his base, to the familiar grooves of his campaign’s well-oiled machine – that something clicked in the crowd. It was when Rudy Giuliani thundered against Hillary’s lies and deception, and Naperville friend number two suddenly chanted, “Hang her!” Somewhere, a woman screamed “Bitch!” and the crowd exploded into the familiar refrain: “Lock her up! Lock her up!” This was what everyone was waiting for – some moment of below-the-belt cruelty, of unencumbered sexism and racism masked as speaking the “truth.” Trump hit it just enough, the immigrants who “took our jobs,” his allusions to the hoards of violent others roaming the streets. The sweet old couple behind me held up their signs, with glee, in the stale air.