Mr. Trump Goes to The Bronx

This article is adapted from a recent Twitter thread, which you may have already seen, but here it is in extended article form anyway.

There is at least one other man on the 5 train uptown who is going to where I’m going. He is stocky and wearing a black and white American flag T-shirt and carrying a black and white American flag sign that he clearly made himself that says “Trump 2020.” His face is hard and mean: to me it reads both daring and afraid. It is May 23rd, 2024, and in a few hours we will both watch Donald Trump deliver a speech at Crotona Park in The Bronx.

I am a fast walker and I pull ahead as we walk fifteen minutes in the hot and muggy sun. The line is shorter than I’d expect for arriving just as doors open, usually you want to arrive a few hours early to things like this. Then again, how would The Bronx know? Trump hasn't’ been there before. As the hours tick down, more and more people show up, until by the time I enter the venue there are at least a thousand people behind me. The arial shots you’ve seen of the rally? They don’t capture those people. Trump’s familiar lie about people who couldn’t make it in is true this time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Trump rallies tend to be largely male, mostly gen-x, and almost exclusively white. This crowd is largely male, all right, maybe even more so than usual, but far, far younger and strikingly more diverse. I’d estimate about 20 percent of this crowd is nonwhite. The woman in line ahead of me speaks excitedly with reporters in a strong accent. She is wearing an American flag hat, red, white, and blu earrings, and a cape she made herself by stitching two American flags together with an Israeli flag. She’s incredibly excited to see Trump.

I spent a lot of my time deep within the switchback line, so I didn’t see as many counterprotesters as others did. It’s safe to say there weren’t too many. A solitary “Convict Trump already!” was visible from the street beyond the line, and Crackhead Barney showed up to sow the best possible kind of chaos, but that’s all I saw. This did not stop the first few speakers from referencing the hateful hordes beyond the gate: a phenomenon that happens hilariously often. Conservatives complain about counterprotesters but they secretly adore them, so much so that, when counterprotesters don’t show up, they’ll simply pretend that they did.

It is hot and it is muggy and there are only six secret service stations so this line is barely moving and, as we know from J6, Trump supporters enjoy moving metal barricades, so perhaps I should not have been surprised when one of the people behind me pried open the barrier between our section of the line and the next switchback. Suddenly, the entire line began to force themselves into the breach: the most blatant and petty antisocial act I have ever seen in my life.:

(Click through to see video)

Those of us foolish enough to exhibit orderly behavior became completely cut off by this diverted stream, and so we too breached containment and shoved our way forward.

This Hobbesian chaos transformed a barely-moving line into a becalmed catastrophe. There’s nothing to be done and so we stand, and wait, and chat. Someone starts talking about the gold standard. I am very authoritatively informed that our phones are being jammed so no one can detonate an IED. Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, apparently, has been dead for years (he was executed in secret). Someone asks me to sign a petition to get a local candidate on the ballot. The card they hand me has a Lyndon LaRouche quote on it. I politely decline.

The person behind me remarks that sleepy Joe hasn't come to the Bronx, could never draw this kind of crowd. If he did, someone else comments, they'd be paid for with "Jewish money." Ahead of us, several young men in tallits carrying a large Israeli flag periodically break into chants of “Jews for Trump!”

The beleaguered staff shout at us to stop shoving about every five minutes and as the line ceases all movement people begrudgingly comply. They announce that an express line has opened for people without bags. “Mine doesn't identify as a bag," someone behind me says: if you were wondering whether they’ve developed a second joke, the answer is unfortunately no. I have suddenly realized that the purse I grabbed for today contains, among other things: narcan, condoms, and a book about the rainbow coalition. And I used to be so careful Luckily, the secret service has bigger things to worry about and after just two hours of waiting in the hot sun with increasingly irate Trump enthusiasts, I am finally inside the park.

(Click through to see video)

Because the line is moving so slowly I am still one of the first thousand or so people into the park. I find a space to stand about 30 feet from the podium, which you’d think would afford me an incredible view, except that the podium sits atop a small hill, thus guaranteeing that only the first few rows would be able to see Trump's Sermon on the Mount. Hey, if it was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for him.

People were not allowed to take their own signs into the rally, so it is significant that several people held up signs of Trump's mugshot with the words "NEVER SURRENDER" beneath. Presumably, staff handed them out. The shot appears also on several t-shirts. All the liberals I know were very excited about that mugshot and I did not want to rain on their parade and still don’t but here I am, raining anyway: that mugshot is the crucifix of MAGA. They love it. They were always going to love it.

Almost immediately after I secure my place in the crowd, the opening speeches began. First up: a gentleman from the New York Young Republican club, which was heavily involved in this event as volunteers. The name of this club makes them sound like the dorkiest kids in your high school. In actuality, they are an ascendent “National Populist” front within the wider conservative movement. I’ve written about their events before. Amanda Moore has exhaustively documented their extremist connections. The club is ascendent. Trump attended their annual gala last December; today, he expressed his appreciation for the club leader, Gavin Wax, by name.

The real trouble for my general sanity, though, began with the next speaker: Madeline Brane, president of the NY Blexit chapter, Blexit being a TPUSA-funded movement for getting Black people to exit the Democratic party. Black Exit. Blexit. You get it.

She is a good speaker. She is talking about how one of her sons was murdered by people who walked free thanks to no cash bail, and another son murdered by fentanyl. She is wounded; her pain is real. She talks about her struggle to afford rent despite working, how her fridge right now is bare because she decided to do laundry this week. She is talking about general indifference to the plight of poor people, the need for assistance, the need for jobs. It is a leftist argument. The crowd is not enthusiastic. She is talking about these real problems and I am thinking about my own fridge and my mounting credit card debt and the fact that freelance rates have not gone up in 20 years.

And then she says, it's because of the immigrants. They are stealing what little we have left.

And the crowd around me erupts into furious cheering and I am staring at the ground, the soil, American soil, my country. My country. Realizing, abruptly, that we have already lost. Because maybe Trump will win and plunge us into fascism, and maybe Biden will win and I'll keep slowly starving to death and so will she and so will everyone because it is too late. This madness is an opportunistic infection within a body politic in the final throes of AIDS.

And I am kinda crying a little bit and she's still talking and I'm not really hearing it. She stops and Macho Man comes on and everyone is very awkward because it is such a profoundly gay song and I am standing in a tight and jostling crowd of MAGA trying not to fully break down.

This is how America ends; not with a bang but with gay disco and red hats as far as the eye can see.

Much to everyone’s relief, Macho Man ends and YMCA begins. The crowd dances in the traditional way, then grooves to Abba until Byron Donalds, the Florida congressman who was born in Brooklyn, takes the stage. He is doing his audition for the VP spot (which, by the way, I called nearly 2 years ago). I’ve written about why Byron Donalds is such a dangerous politician: he's very, very good at what he does. Not perfect, though. In a speech filled with effusive praise, Donalds says that Trump is one of the greatest presidents of our country: a mistake, in my estimation, since a better answer for a potential VP would be that Trump is the best president who ever lived.

Donalds then led the audience in the first Ritual Booing of the Press of the night: a sacred MAGA ritual. I always feel a bit weird being in the center of the crowd and not in the media section to receive my condemnation. Trump would go on to lead not one but two more ritual boos, which everyone enjoyed heartily.

People in the audience are pretty excited about Donalds. A few people say they'd love him to be VP. Others aren't sure who Donalds is. He finishes. He leaves. There's some more disco. And then, Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be An American" starts playing and here he is, allegedly: somewhere atop that hill, just beyond my vision, maybe 30 feet away. Two Black men probably in their 20s start shrieking "It's DONALD TRUMP! IT'S DONALD TRUMP!!" and begin to fight their way to the front. I've seen this reaction before. The adulation, this fervor...it's a religious revival.

Trump begins to speak. He says that it's great to be in New York, his birth city, that he loves it here, that it is the home of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and etc, then launches into this screed about how NYC has declined and how everything is bad and crime is up and homeless people are everywhere and drugs and etc.

And then, abruptly, he goes off script. He laughs and says, don't worry, the speech gets positive soon. Maybe he could sense he was losing the audience, or maybe he suddenly realized he didn’t want to trash the state where he spent some of his happiest years. He began talking about those years: long, meandering stories of construction projects he’s done, including a detailed description of building the Wollman Skating Rink — by hand, apparently. He described mixing the salt with the water for the piping beneath the concrete. Some outlets will tell you that the audience began to lose interest, which is the wrong way to look at it. Trump has always meandered in this way. Most Trump fans react to these stories the way they might react to a favorite uncle drunkenly telling a long story during a fishing trip. Is it boring? Yeah. Is it quality time? Absolutely. These stories create parasocial bonds that are hard to explain to people who have not seen Trump speak. 

I’ve seen Trump speak live six times, like I said at the start: at CPAC three times, at Philadelphia, in Detroit, and now here. I've watched countless other speeches from the comfort of home. Never have I seen him as jazzed to be anywhere as he was to be in NYC. Trump wants people to love him all the time and is always telling big stories about himself but these Nwe York reminisces feels different. He actually seems very passionate about his real estate career. You get a glimpse into an alternate universe where he just kept doing that. Seems like it would have been nicer for everyone.

Trump continued to meander. At one point, he told us that he used to give speeches about success and that he was tired of politics and would we mind if he talked about success a little bit? The audience cheered. They would not mind if he shot them all, I think. If Trump wants it, it must be good.

Thrilled at the reaction, Trump gives an inspirational speech. He talks about hard work and doing what you love and the things his father taught him about business and the importance of momentum and then, like Madeline Brane, says that immigrants are destroying all those things. He will deport them all and stop “migrant crime.” They are only sending over muscular men, he says. “I think they're building an army from within!" The immigrants are going to destroy us from the inside, he says. which is why we have to round them up and get rid of them. 

The crowd loves it. Deafening cheers. I am being shoved aggressively by a Black woman in a hijab with her young daughter. They are hoping to get a glimpse of Dear Leader. I literally cannot move, I am being crushed between hot bodies on this stifling Bronx afternoon Eventually she manages to go forward and a white man boosts her Black daughter onto his shoulders so she can see Donald Trump as he talks about...whatever he's talking about now. Probably the snake song. He loves the snake song, and if you aren’t familiar with it, it’s worth a read.

My job is to tell you what's true, not what I wish were true. Trump gave a fantastic speech. It was 90 minutes and parts of it dragged but it was full of energy and pep and passion and at no point did he sound like he was pushing 80. If Trump performs 1/10th this well in the CNN debate this June I think Biden might actually be cooked

The speech ends and “Hold On I’m Coming” by Sam and Dave starts playing followed by another rendition of YMCA. I am extremely close to the speakers and it feels like the village people are screaming at me and I am feeling pretty damn disoriented and I am walking out of the venue and here is what I saw.

(Click through to see video)

I am on the subway with many other protesters, resplendent in their novelty T-shirts. A couple drink beers from brown bags and I am immediately furious at myself for not doing the same. I am listening to the live version of Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes by Sun Kil Moon on repeat, and thinking about that soil beneath my feet.

I am in a bar near my house drinking $3 PBRs and uploading video from the rally to Twitter. I am not drunk enough for this, but I’m working on it and this is a good bar: divey and cheap with a sign announcing Lesbian Trivia on Wednesdays. A few beers later I am chatting to the woman next to me — a regular, as it turns out — and I bathe in her friendliness and normalcy and enthusiasm for the bar. I want to come back here forever, live in this city forever, live in this country forever. But three days earlier I negotiated a lease that ends in January instead of next summer. Sometimes dreams don’t come true. The American Dream, I suppose, is no exception.