The Ecstasy of Donald Trump
“I’m against the anchor babies, and I’m against the Muslims,” says Kathy Parker, a tiny former elementary-school teacher with gold hoop earrings. “We can’t have churches in their countries—why should they have mosques in ours? He is the only one with the guts to speak out and say it.”
.. The other night, at a Trump rally in Alabama, a black protester who shouted “Black lives matter!” was surrounded by white men who punched and kicked him. Far from apologizing for this, Trump is gloating about it: “What an obnoxious, terrible guy that was,” he tells the crowd in Myrtle Beach, who turn around and hiss at the press on his cue.
.. Someone must have suggested to Trump, presumably not flatteringly, that his racial-wedge strategy resembled Nixon’s coded appeals to the “silent majority.” Trump, rather than deny it, put it on his signs: They say, in red cursive letters, “the silent majority stands with Trump.”
.. Despite all the negativity and fear, the energy in this room does not feel dark and aggressive and threatening. It doesn’t feel like a powder keg about to blow, a lynch mob about to rampage. It feels joyous.
.. citing an unspecified Secret Service directive, the campaign hasannounced that reporters may not mingle with the crowd until Trump has left the building; one is escorted to the restroom while he is still working the rope line. (Last week, Trump’s campaign manager threatened to “blacklist” a CNN reporter who tried to leave the pen to film a protester.)