Why Southwest Virginia Is Trump Country
A black pastor named Mark Burns gave a brief, very hoarse sermon containing the line “We won’t let little Rubio get away with what he said about Donald Trump.” No turning the other cheek for these Christians!
.. Then the insults began, directed primarily at “Little Rubio,” a phrase I must have heard 20 times from the podium: half by Trump and half by the warm-up acts. “We cannot have choke artists running our country.” Clearly, Trump is most concerned with Rubio, though I did hear the phrase “Lyin’ Ted” at least once.
.. Someone tore a sign to bits, and amidst the falling debris starts chanting. Trump gives him a stare-down and asks him “Are you from Mexico?” Some angry shouts from the crowd, which now gets a bit surly. A group of black protestors calls out “Black Lives Matter,” to which the crowd responds with “All Lives Matter.” A scuffle takes place as the black protestors are removed, which I later learn is a a Secret Service agent body slamming a press photographer who had left his holding pen.
.. We seem to be in a very ugly place. Sure, you need police to protect a presidential candidate and would-be president. But is violence against the press what we’ve come to? (In the event that he is elected, Trump promises to change the libel laws to make it easier to sue the press.) The protestors were indeed rude—though hardly ruder than the candidate himself, and nothing compared to the violent act by the SS (a suitable acronym) agent on a press guy.
.. One of the messages is that this is not a left/right election, it is an insider/outsider election, and the base finally discovered that it has been played. It is hardly surprising the stories being told that the second choice of many Bernie Sanders voters is Donald Trump (though I doubt that the reverse is true), something that might have applied to me before seeing Mr. Trump in action.
.. As I said to some Swedish press person who mistook me for a hard-core Donald Trump supporter, the Republican National Committee will do everything in their power to stop Donald Trump—except modify their policies that have been shafting the base.
.. I left with the sinking sensation that this will not end well.