My long, strange trip to Madison Square Garden to meet the Trumpies

The Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was my last chance to see the man in action before the election. Even though the organizers rejected my request for a media pass (which, The nation?), my husband and I decided to go anyway. Unfortunately, when we arrived at Penn Station, the place was overcrowded and the police, of whom there were many, had blocked every exit but one. It took forever to get out of there. Once outside we had no idea where to go. We stood in a long line for a while, which turned out to be reserved for VIPs only. “How did you become a VIP?” I asked several people who seemed to have no idea. “My friend arranged it,” one woman said, shrugging. We walked to 34th and 6th streets and joined the line of regular people. It was even longer. So much for some mischievous Democrats trying to sabotage the event by registering and not attending.

The first thing I noticed was how many black and brown people there were – lots of Hispanics, more than a few blacks and Asians. Of course, there were plenty of white people, including elegant Eastern European women and their beefy husbands, young Orthodox Jewish men (where were the women?), and loud young men who regularly shouted “USA!” USA!” But the image you may have of Trump rallies as all-white fiestas hasn't come true.

The first person I spoke to was a black woman holding a huge American flag over which she had draped a white embroidered tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl. Their three most important issues were immigration, compulsory vaccination and “boys in the girls’ toilet”. She claimed her 11-year-old daughter was taught at school to wear rolled-up socks next to her vagina to simulate male genitals. She was a staunch opponent of abortion, although her boyfriend at the time urged her to terminate the pregnancy. She also told me that she had dreams in which God told her what was going to happen. For example, two weeks before Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, God told her that there would be an attempt on his life.

The next was a Colombian American who said she was 82 and had lived in the United States since she was two years old. Her English wasn't great, especially considering she grew up and went to school here, but what she told me was clear: Her trucking business was doing great under Trump—gas was cheap, taxes were low—but now , thanks in part to “that stupid Obamacare,” had problems. I asked her what she thought of Trump's many insults toward Latino immigrants. Like everyone I interviewed, she simply didn't include anything that contradicted her view: “Trump loves the Spanish people!”

Next up is a young Korean-American Christian and anti-abortion activist wearing a stylish gray MAGA hat. She was simply the nicest person in the world. We immediately felt connected because we were small women in a sea of ​​larger people. She told me that she worked from home and did some online work for NYU, but didn't want to say more, possibly because she was building her own online business, the nature of which she also didn't want to disclose. Like many Trumpies I've met, she had gone deep down the rabbit hole of alternative facts, which she found by following far-right commentators on the Internet. She believed that the FBI and Nancy Pelosi had orchestrated January 6th. She believed that an old woman was now in prison for walking past the Capitol that day. She believed the jury found Trump guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll because of threats of physical violence from, among other things, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. What about all the sexist things Trump has said? “So many men talk like that,” she said with a weak smile. Even though her parents were immigrants, she supported Trump's plan to deport millions of them: After all, her parents had waited years to come here legally. When I pointed out that many of the undocumented people were seeking asylum, she said, “Yes,” but their appointments were five years in the future, so they just did it Wff! ran away.

Standing nearby was an old white man from Cape May, New Jersey, who described himself as a building contractor. He told me that Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris' husband, was to blame for the flooding in North Carolina. Two weeks before the floods, Emhoff had purchased permits for lithium mines in the state, but people had refused to sell their homes so the mines could be built. Then came the floods that destroyed the houses – now the property could be bought for almost nothing. A little too convenient, these floods, right?

I asked his daughter, a yoga teacher and life coach, what she thought Trump should do. “I just want it to be like 2020,” she replied. Meanwhile, a young white woman shouted, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” while dancing with a sign that reads “Say No to the Hoe.”

I wish I had had the opportunity to meet this energetic misogynist, but at this point we were informed that the garden was full and we made the long and confusing trek back to 6th Avenue. I had asked a very tall young man to take a photo of the crowd as high as he could lift my phone. It shows the crowded street leading up to MSG, two long blocks away. (When people say the Garden isn't full, don't believe them.) It turned out that this courteous young man was a recently hired reporter The daily callera conservative outlet founded by Tucker Carlson. His main concern appeared to be a ban on gas stoves, which Harris was said to have pushed, a claim Harris said was false The Washington Post.

I returned from my afternoon with the Trumpies confused. We talk a lot about people living in a blue bubble, and that's fair – many of us do. But these (mostly) friendly normal people also live in a bubble – from TikTok videos, far-right YouTubers and websites like, um, The daily caller. They are deeply alienated from standard sources of information. For them, that means something is being reported The New York Times or The Washington Post This is one more reason to find it suspicious. It's a paranoid vision in which the vice president's husband controls the weather (well, him Is Jewish) and the government will come into your home and take your stove. And yet they seemed perfectly normal – well, maybe not the woman who believed God spoke to her in dreams. Some of my friends thought I was risking violence by joining the crowd – but people didn't seem to be deterred when I said I was pro-Harris and were there simply out of curiosity.

Of course I don't know what's going on in their heads. Are they really simply ignoring Trump's many racist, misogynistic statements, his lies and his disregard for democratic norms? Or would a longer conversation show that they agreed with him, that immigrants are rapists and criminals who come from dirty countries and eat their neighbors' cats and dogs, that the Democrats are the enemy within, and that Harris is not just a politician , that they don't agree with, but also that they don't agree with a lazy, low IQ person who has wormed his way into the government and has no idea what he's doing?

Several people told me that Trump loves her. In fact, he says that all the time. The day after the rally, I received a text message from Trump: This text is not for everyone. You get it because I love you, Katha. Most politicians don't talk like that. It's rare that Dem would say that Harris actually loves her. Perhaps there is an emotional connection between Trump and his supporters that transcends the content of anything he says. Perhaps the very things we mock him for—his long-winded, rambling speeches, his awkwardness, his orange hair and makeup, his strangely distant relationship with Melania—make him seem endearingly human. Maybe all they care about is that he acknowledges and validates their nostalgia for the supposedly simpler time when the US was on top and it looked like their lives were going to be okay. On my way out of the crowd I met a young black man selling MAGA hats and t-shirts. I asked him if he was pro-Trump or if this was more of a business matter. “Oh, I’m for him,” he said with a big smile. “Trump loves people!” I asked him what people mean when they say Trump would make America great again. When was America great? “Whenever you were happy,” he said. “Trump wants it to be that way.”