What Trump’s carnivalesque rallies tell us about his 2024 campaign
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The aroma of marijuana wafted from the queue at a food stand. A man dozed in a foetal position on the sand a few yards away. On distant giant screens, Patrick Swayze lifted Jennifer Grey above his head in a scene from Dirty Dancing. A woman with long grey hair swayed to the music. “I’ve never been fondled by Donald Trump,” her shirt read, “But I’ve been screwed by Joe Biden.”
Trump campaign rallies blend the carnivalesque with the political. The one earlier this month on the beach in the coastal town of Wildwood, New Jersey, was big and bombastic, like the festival’s star himself.
“Americans are over the top. America’s over the top. He’s like that,” says Marcia Longinetti, who runs a housecleaning business. She was draped in the flag of Brazil, the country she left decades earlier. Trump would deal with the “chaos” in the US and abroad, she says. “He’ll end the wars,” says her husband, David. “He’ll fix things real quick,” says another man standing nearby.
Chaos is Trump’s word to describe Biden’s America and America’s future if the Democrats win again in November. The immigrant “invasion”, conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the anti-war protests at US universities: he cites all as proof.
At the Pennsylvania and New Jersey rallies, none of the attendees who spoke to the Financial Times believed Biden won the 2020 election. Some thought Barack Obama was still secretly running the country and that leftwing activists, not Trump supporters, had attacked the Capitol on January 6 2021. Anger at Democratic elites and Biden’s handling of the country was rife.
“My problem was [America’s 2021 withdrawal from] Afghanistan,” says Rusty Hughes, a Vietnam war veteran and retired heavy equipment operator from Vineland, New Jersey. “I’m also not happy with 10mn illegals in the country.”
Waiting for Trump is part of the fun. In Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, in April, people gathered beside roads festooned with Maga signs to barbecue, drink beer and watch for Trump’s motorcade taking him to the rally. In New Jersey, some camped on the beach overnight to secure their spot.
The waiting Wildwood crowd was treated to a playlist of baby boomer hits — Elvis, Johnny Cash and Elton John. Lots of Elton John. Secret service snipers scanned the crowd from an inactive water slide behind the stage. Police drones hovered. An aeroplane circled, trailing its sign: “GOD BLESS D TRUMP”.
A big moment in the ritual arrived when Trump’s Boeing 757 cruised into view and banked left over the beach. The crowd roared and the loudspeakers blasted out the theme from Top Gun.
Warm-up speeches and a prayer for Trump from a local pastor followed. Local congressman Jeff Van Drew leapt on to the stage, to AC/DC’s “Back in Black”. “It makes us sick, which is why we’re here,” the former Democrat said of Biden’s presidency.
These rallies climax with Trump’s appearance: red hat, red tie, navy-blue suit; Lee Greenwood’s patriotic Maga anthem, “God Bless the USA”, booming as he enters.
The message from the podium is just as familiar: a mix of exaggeration, risqué humour, dog-whistle racism and bravado. Trump told the Wildwood crowd that Biden was a “moron”. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, was like a “beached whale”.
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Trump described his personal legal problems as “bullshit”, prompting the crowd to chant the word. He railed against “illegals”, the cost of hamburgers and the “fake news media”. People who minutes before had politely answered journalists’ questions turned on command to hiss at the cordoned-off press corps.
The pantomime vibe and bawdy jokes went down a treat — for a while. But the evening breeze was brisk, and long before Trump was wrapping up, the carnival energy had dissolved.
“Crooked Joe surrendered to the terrorists just like he surrendered to the Taliban,” said Trump, his voice a distant echo drifting above thousands of people as they marched across the sand to the exits. “It was pretty cold,” said a man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Never surrender”.
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