Trump addresses supporters in Lititz, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

One of the first signs that donald trump was a viable presidential candidate were his rallies. In the summer of 2015, the host of celebrity apprentice, whose campaign initially seemed like a publicity stunt, drew thousands of people to events in Iowa and New Hampshire, and even tens of thousands to an Alabama football stadium.

Since then, live events have defined his political career. It was at a rally in Sioux Center before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, where he boasted: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” An early hint of violence came during clashes with protesters as Trump marched toward the Republican nomination, culminating in a rally in Chicago that was canceled even before he arrived after fights broke out among attendees. His inauguration, which was functionally a rally, set the tone for the new administration: Trump falsely insisted that it was the largest inauguration crowd in American history. When White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer repeated the claim, he became a national celebrity and a laughing stock overnight. Then, in June 2020, at his first rally since the start of the pandemic, Trump held an event in Tulsa that exemplified the administration’s lax attitude toward COVID. A small crowd showed up, and a notable guest, Herman Cain, died of the virus shortly afterward. The following year, on January 6, he called a rally on the Ellipse in Washington to protest his election loss, just before the mob attacked the Capitol. Last summer, he was almost killed at a rally in Pennsylvania, then turned the near-death experience into iconography when he shouted “fight” with blood streaming down his face. And, of course, at his recent big rally at Madison Square Garden, a comedian described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” – triggering a wave of reaction.

The crowd inside First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Saturday night was sparse compared to some of the venues the former president has filled in the past. The entire top half of the 22,000-capacity stadium was blocked off, as were several sections at the rear. Trump’s comments were mixed into a thicket of hundreds of other rallies he has held over the better part of a decade: absurd claims like that he was winning in New Jersey and problematic comments like when he celebrated a questioner who suggested he Kamala Harris She had worked as a prostitute. Moments like this are so common now that the reporters who fly around the country to follow him to every event barely moved to tweet.

It wasn’t always like this. When Trump started, he mocked politicians who used a teleprompter and their speeches were a form of free association; he wandered from topic to topic, making long digressions and frequently settling into familiar riffs against a host of political adversaries. It was irresistible television. It wasn’t just that the speeches were newsworthy (after all, comments from any presidential candidate inherently are), but that they were also entertaining. “Is there anything more fun than a Trump rally?” asks often. The free publicity was worth millions.

After becoming the Republican nominee in 2016, he embraced the tyranny of the teleprompter in an effort to avoid comments that excited cable news producers but alienated undecided voters. He long ago developed a riff method in which he starts with the message until he feels the need to go off on a tangent (like his recent comment about Arnold Palmer’s penis size at a rally in the golfer’s hometown) and then riffs freely. before finally returning to his script. The result is a structured improvisation, like a Grateful Dead show, in which you go from reading the teleprompters on either side of the stage to improvising while looking forward.

The rallies are also a kind of rhetorical laboratory in which Trump tests out new material and sees what political position or phrasing appeals to his audience and what doesn’t. Sometimes he even does collective work. In Greensboro, he praised the costume of a man dressed as Uncle Sam while admiring the muscular forearms of an attendee sitting in the front row. “Holy shit, look at him!” -Trump exclaimed-. “I always wanted to look like him, but I didn’t want to do the work.”

At events like these, Trump’s base comes to pay personal tribute; he attracts fans, some from hundreds of miles awaywho wait hours to see it, and street vendors come to sell MAGA merchandise to the faithful. The imminent end of the campaign was evident on Saturday with a sign announcing a discount of “Everything 2 for $30”, while people searched for T-shirts with messages such as “You missed it, bitches”, in reference to the two assassination attempts against Trump. Another T-shirt said “No Hoe” next to a photo of Harris with a barbell.

The line outside the arena snaked through the parking lot, where fans could rent a beach chair for $20 and buy a bottle of water for $2. (The petition collectors were working the line on behalf of Elon Musk’s super-PACencouraging people to sign up for their daily $1 million raffle). Lori Davis had rented a chair and her red, white and blue visor protected her from the sun. This was his fourth rally since 2016 and he had arrived at 11 a.m. on a Greyhound bus from his hometown of Bluefield, West Virginia. “I’m not really here to listen to everything you have to say. I just like him primarily as a person and that’s what draws me here. “He is a celebrity as well as a former president.”

It was Lisa Pruitt’s third Trump rally, and she had arrived even earlier, at 6 a.m., after an hour-long drive from her home in Carrboro, a liberal enclave adjacent to Chapel Hill. He had waited more than ten hours in a parking lot on an unseasonably warm day “because he’s worth it.”

Rochelle Richardson, better known as Silk, the right-wing online personality who, along with her late sister, straddles the line between Trump surrogate and Trump superfan, said what made her rallies unique was “the energy.” of love and happiness.”

“I find it fascinating how people, every time they’re here at a Trump rally, it gives them hope,” he said. “They are no longer depressed. It gives them hope and something to look forward to, especially in life. And every time they hear President Trump speak, they say: My God, I can achieve the American dream.“

However, the protests may be coming to an end. In a rare moment of public reflection when speaking with Tucker Carlson last week at an event in Arizona, the 78-year-old openly contemplated the inevitability of the Trump Show eventually ending. “It will never happen again,” Trump said before looking ahead. “Four years from now, someone will run. It could be JD… he’s going to have competition no matter what, but when you have a rally, they’re going to have 250 to 300 people. “If Ronald Reagan came back from the dead, in Ronald Reagan’s heyday, if he went to California to have a rally, he would have 250 to 300 people in a ballroom somewhere.”

Trump went on to say that he just started thinking about this. As he told the crowd in Greensboro just three days before the election: “We’ll have three big ones on Sunday and four big ones on Monday and then we’ll shut it down and it’ll never happen again.”