James Morrow: What a Donald Trump election rally is really like
According to everyone from CNN to The New York Times, Trump rallies are nothing more than just a bunch of low IQ yokels being sold snake oil by a seedy property developer. But James Morrow found a very different scene.
Opinion
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If you want to understand just why the US presidential contest is so bizarre and so close, just look at the role of the American media in telling Americans what to think, rather than what the arguments are.
For weeks, months, practically a decade now, much of the American press has told the world that Trump rallies are modern day torchlight rallies, seedy gatherings of fascists and misfits and white nationalists.
According to everyone from CNN to The New York Times, these events are nothing more than just a bunch of low IQ yokels being sold snake oil by a seedy New York property developer.
And yet.
This column spent the morning of the last full day of the presidential campaign in Raleigh, North Carolina, talking to people at one of Trump’s final events of the campaign and found a very different scene.
Let’s be clear that this was not a Fifth Avenue high society scene.
Sure, there were a few office guys in blue blazers in ties scattered in among a crowd that also included mothers with small kids, a landscaping crew in their work gear, and plenty of other people who were able to get the Monday morning off to show up as early as four AM to see their guy.
Ebony Cootes, a middle-aged black woman who described herself as “an Amazon gig worker” said that this was her ninth rally, and that she enjoyed going because of the “love” she felt at Trump events.
Two Hispanic women, seeing us interviewing rally goers, came up to declare themselves “Puerto Ricans for Trump”, saying they were not bothered by the controversy over that comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage.
Yes, a few people had conspiracies on the brain and worried that a Harris win would mean the end of America and world government feudalism.
But frankly, none of it was more bonkers than anything that gets aired from the other direction in the New York Times, which evangelises like a fire-and-brimstone preacher that Trump’s return will herald the end of democracy as we know it.
And it goes without saying that a rally whose soundtrack is a mix of patriotic country ballads (Toby Keith’s The Angry American was a particular favourite) and Village People bangers is more party than Nazi party.
As for Trump himself, his speech Monday was his usual performance, funny stories, riffing, but with the added punch of a push to slap tariffs on Mexican imports until the Mexican government did something to stem illegal migration.
Contrast this with Kamala Harris’s last day: A series of rallies in which hectored her supporters to cast their ballots: “Let’s get out the vote!” she repeatedly yelled at a crowd in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
While light on policy, the Harris campaign’s final hours were marked by a buzz of celebrity performances – her big closing act was to feature Katy Perry, Oprah Winfrey, and Lady Gaga.
The only thing we have not seen during the course of this campaign has been anything remotely like scrutiny from the same press that has whipped up every Trump controversy like a meringue.
Which may be why she was able to get away with not holding a single proper press conference since becoming the party’s nominee.
A small example of this played out in the past 24 hours when it was revealed that several months ago Harris did a podcast with a prominent Muslim influencer in which she decided to argue the position that bacon is a “spice.”
The event took place during a sit-down with Kareem Rahma for his TikTok and Instagram show Subway Takes bur never wound up going to air.
Bizarrely, Harris used her feelings about bacon (“think about it, it’s pure flavour!”) as a way to pivot Rahma away from an attempt to talk about Gaza.
Of course, had Trump said something like this, the outrage would be felt on the Richter scale, with accusations of everything from Islamophobia to dementia being thrown at the man.
Yet Harris has mostly gotten a pass for this.
Contrast this to Trump, who most recently was raked over the coals for the very reasonable take that people like Liz Cheney who want to send other peoples’ kids off to war might feel differently if they were ever in the trenches.
Of course, if Trump edges out a win – he’s still a narrow favourite – his enemies in the press will do nothing to reconsider that they got it wrong.
Instead, we will be looking at a meltdown that makes what happened in the wake of the 2016 election look like a toddler’s sulk.
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