15 Feb Jane Kansas goes to a Trump rally
From her winter home in Tampa, snowbird Jane Kansas made her way to last Friday’s Donald Trump Rally at the University of South Florida Sun Dome, seating capacity 10,411. Once inside, Kansas squeezed through the crowd to a concrete standing room area immediately below dais where Trump spoke:
Because this is a sports arena the lighting is very white and very bright. Trump’s hair is very yellow. His face is very orange. His teeth are very white. His shirt is very white. His tie is very red. He speaks without notes, with confidence. He does not say anything he does not want to. Except for one acknowledgement of the crowd in the upper tiers (something about whether those people can even see him) he looks straight ahead, into the the first rows and the tops of the heads of those on the floor, which is also directly into media cameras which are at the back of the floor, also on risers….
Trump also talks about what he did earlier today. This intrigue me. It’s like we’re meeting for coffee and I just asked him about his day….
He uses language best used in private conversation. He does not repeat his comment from a few days ago that Ted Cruz is a pussy, but he uses words like sickos and stinks. Actually, he did with the pussy comment what he often does: he repeats something someone in the audience yells, so it doesn’t seem like his own words. In Manchester, New Hampshire, a woman in the crowd yelled that Cruz is a pussy and Trump, with mock editorializing, repeated it.
Trump rails against special interest groups, lobbyists, Clinton, Bush, and France for its gun laws; he says armed citizens would have made a difference in the Paris attacks. “A gun-free zone,” he yells, “is like candy to a baby!”
His analysis of the contest for president is short and easily understood by his audience. “We got the communist against the entrepreneur,” he yells. “I’ll take the entrepreneur.”
“Bergdahl (tremendous booing) is a dirty rotten traitor!” Tremendous cheering. “Thirty years ago he would have been shot!” Huge cheers. The arena vibrates.
Kansas found the crowd’s rage unsettling. Her feet hurt. Her head throbbed. She found her way to an exit.
I get fries from the Bacon Boss food truck. I walk out to the main road to the bus stop. There are many police and more arrive. The stop-and-go traffic is blocked by police in both directions. There are few minutes of quiet and waiting. A radio crackles, “You stay in lock down. I’m on the move.” Sure enough, about twenty very big motorcycles flashing very bright red, white, and blue lights speed out of the stadium area, turn onto the road where I am waiting for the bus, and zoom on by. A small fleet of Escalades follows, and then more motorcycles. That’s a nice little bonus, I think, to see Trump’s motorcade. My bus comes along.
Find much more colour and detail here.
