Lining Up for Donald Trump. The Five Stages of Grief
Four hours in the baking sun, just me and a few thousand of my closest Trump-supporting friends. They're not all who you think they are.
THERE ARE underhand writers out there - that would be me - who have formed a low opinion of Donald Trump’s supporters from afar. These sneaky, mean-spirited bastards - me again - will do anything, and I mean anything, if it means being able to take the piss out of these upstanding American patriots for no higher reason than the entertainment of a small band of self-selecting, snooty liberals who in all probability believe only a lobotomised racist could support Trump - that would be you, dear reader.
So it was that I lined up for four hours and 10 minutes in 104-degree heat, on an unshaded concrete plaza, alongside thousands of Trump fans waiting to get into the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in Tuscon, Arizona, to hear the Dear Leader speak. A Trump rally. I had never been to one before. A bucket list day (“I was there”), even if it meant listening to the old monster spewing racist bile for a couple of hours.
Stage One. Anticipation.
I took a ride from Tucson to Phoenix. This sounds like the start of a Glenn Campbell song but it’s not, unfortunately. It’s a U2 song - an arrow-straight stretch of highway, vast and ugly, offering nothing of visual or aural interest, only desert, scrub, and three boring podcasts about Premier League football.
I arrived just before 9 am, five hours ahead of Trump’s scheduled appearance, and paid $20 for parking. There were plenty of available spaces, which was encouraging. I must be early, I said to myself and prepared to take my place near the front of the line. I was mistaken, both in the choice of parking and in the expectation of my proximity to the promised land of a comfy seat in Row A.
There was free parking at the convention center one block away and it was already full. The front door of the venue was but a distant memory as I snaked through the concert jungle of downtown Tucson. I briefly flirted with cutting the line, having fallen into a conversation with a guy who proudly informed me he had already been there an hour. He was wearing a Stetson and a “Donald Jesus Trump” t-shirt.
“Where are you from?” he said, catching my accent.
“Glasgow.”
“I’m from Dundee,’’ he said. “I renewed my marriage views there 16 years ago.”
“Dundee’s great,’’ I said, trying to close the deal.
“No it’s not,’’ he said. “Why do you think I moved here?”
“Any chance of cutting in with you?”
He looked at the people behind him, a group of rowdy frat boys from the University of Arizona and a tattooed, thick-set couple who looked like they’d got here on a Harley, and shook his head.
At least there was good news waiting when I finally arrived at my destination, the end of the line. The marshal clicked me in and relayed my number into his walkie-talkie.
“1.4.0.7.”
I had done my research the night before. The venue capacity was 2,378. I was well inside that number, a comforting thought as I took my spot and smiled at my new “line mates”.
Stage Two. Friendship.
Meet Joe, Natalie and Abby. Joe is a veteran of the first Gulf War and organises pool competitions for a living. He is also a fantastic pool player, according to Natalie, his wife. Abby is 19 and a student at Arizona, where she is studying nursing. She has two brothers and a sister, all living back in Washington state, and was in a sorority last year but there was too much partying and not enough studying, especially by her, which is kinda disrespectful to her mom, who is paying the $250,000 cost of her four-year education, so she’s ditched the sorority and is studying a lot more and has a ton of chemistry homework which needs to be done by tomorrow.
Abby came up for breath, which gave me my chance to provoke these three friendly people into a Trump-esque rage.
“Bad news,” I said, showing them what was on my phone screen.
Linda Ronstadt had issued a statement. She hadn’t missed Donald and hit the wall, as the saying goes.
“Donald Trump is holding a rally in a rented hall in my hometown. Since the building has my name on it I need to say something…it saddens me to see him bring his hate show to Tucson…I deplore his politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance.”
“She’s entitled to her opinion,’’ Joe said.
Come on, Joe. You can do better than that. Give me some rage.
It turns out he couldn’t do better than that. And nor could Abby.
“Who is Linda Ronstadt?”
Joe told her about Ronstadt’s country music, her honey voice. I might have mentioned she was breathtakingly beautiful back in the day.
“She’s not beautiful inside,’’ Abby said, matter-of-fact. “Seems to me she’s used a lot of hateful words herself.”
We talked about the debate earlier in the week. It was a rigged deal, said Joe. “Three against one.”
“But Trump got to speak for nine minutes longer than she did.”
“Yeah, but she knew what the questions would be.”
“I don’t think that’s the case.”
“Well, she seemed to have all the answers at her fingertips.”
“Maybe that was because she actually did some homework before going into the debate, unlike Trump.”
Joe concedes Harris did a decent job of presenting her case. “But I could never vote for someone like that.”
The American comedian Jordan Klepper has made a name for himself showing up at Trump rallies and interviewing people who are waiting in line. Check out his videos on YouTube. They’re fantastically funny but just a little mean, in large part because Klepper - or his producer - has a gift for being able to spot a looney tune in a crowd, the kind of people who should be protected from themselves. He sticks a microphone in these poor souls and gets them to say stuff like, “9/11 was an inside job and it’s all Barack Obama’s fault because where was he that day? That’s right. Nowhere to be seen.”
Joe was nothing like those people. He’s a stand-up, sensible guy. The kind of guy you would gladly play pool with, as long as it wasn’t for money.
Stage Three. Bored (definitely) and Hopeful (just about).
Two hours in and the line had moved less than a third of the distance towards the front doors. The temperature was over 100 degrees with little escape. The four of us, survivors on a failing planet too close to the sun, take turns ducking under a bush to enjoy the meagre shade. A woman in black a few yards in front of us succumbed and fell straight backward. Her head hit the concrete, a sound I’m never likely to forget. Natalie shielded her eyes.
“Her eyes are rolling back,’’ she said. “I can’t watch this.
The woman is out cold for five minutes, by which time the medics have arrived. She has a golf ball-sized, bleeding lump on the back of her head. A small kid was being cradled by his mum. He looks the colour of a kale-based smoothie. I gave into my instincts and texted a friend of mine who works for American TV and is traveling with the Trump campaign.
“Candidate leaves supporters stranded in the unbearable heat.” Sounds like a story to me,
“That’s awful. This unfortunately happens all the time at his rallies,’’ my friend responds.
It does. Earlier in the summer, 11 people were taken to hospital and treated for heat exhaustion after collapsing during the long wait to get into a Trump event in Phoenix. Dozens were taken to hospital last month after fainting in the heat outside a rally in nearby Glendale.
Natalie was suffering. She disappeared off to find some cold water and came back 10 minutes later, but only to get Joe.
“I can’t take it anymore,’” she said.
I was sorry to see them go.
Abby called her mum. “I’m standing in line at a Trump rally,’’ she says.
I strain to hear what mum has to say. “Shouldn’t you be at class?”
A few minutes later, Abby left without saying goodbye.
Stage Four. The End in Nigh.
I made a new friend and this time it was for real. Mike Doherty and I exchanged emails. He’s a plumber but also an actor, having appeared in 40 independent movies, all Westerns. He’s even made a movie of his own, Double-Crossed in El Paso, which has won awards at eight independent film festivals.
“Great title,’’ I say, thinking Mike’s the kind of looney tune Jordan Klepper is always lucky enough to find.
“There’s a 15-minute version on YouTube,’’ he tells me. Sure enough, I take a look and there it is.
It’s not every day you go to a Trump rally and run into the writer-director of an award-winning Western. But just when I think this day could not get any more surreal along comes a guy dressed like the washed-up, clapped-out old 1990s wrestler Hulk Hogan, who you might remember was the biggest celebrity to show up at the GOP convention this summer to support Trump.
The guy even has Hogan’s raspy voice down perfectly. He strolls down the line, high-fiving people, getting ever closer to the front. It took a few minutes before the audience caught on to what he was up to. Someone called over a cop
“That guy is cutting the line,’’ he said, pointing at Hogan, who was now 30 yards and at least 50 people ahead.
The cop was a one-man armory. He shook his head. “Sorry,’’ he says. “There’s no law against being an asshole.”
Stage Five. You’re Shitting Me.
I’m still kicking myself I didn’t take a photograph. Hopefully, you’ll believe me. We didn’t get in, Mike and I. We were 100 people and approximately 30 yards from the metal detectors when the doors to the auditorium closed. A female police officer tried to make her voice heard without the help of any kind of amplification.
“That’s it, suckers. Place is full. You can all go home,’’ she said (possibly).
Mike shrugged, shook my hand and left. “Enjoy the movie.”
Bill, an Air Force veteran, and his son were behind us for the last hour.
“You’re shittin’ me,’’ he said. He looked appalled, as if the propeller on his Air Force plane had stopped turning and he was a mile short of the runway.
“I knew it,’’ said his son.
But no one got angry. No one lost their temper and lashed out at the security staff. Trump could learn a thing or two from his supporters. Me, too.
“There’s always tomorrow,’’ I told myself as I made my placid way back to the car.
And this time there really is tomorrow.
Trump rally. Las Vegas. Parking opens 9 am. Doors open 3 pm.
Six more hours in the baking sun. Sounds like the start of another Glenn Campbell song.