MAGAReport 10/29/24 - appetite for hate
Thoughts from the Madison Square Garden rally and the forums
I went to the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. It was the 7+ hour closing argument for his candidacy and boy did his team pull out all the stops. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Rudy Giuliani, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Melania and Eric and Don Jr., Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr., and more made appearances. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, came out swinging her sequined MAGA jacket and dancing. All the high-profile MAGAs were there and it was wild.
You’ve seen the stories about Kill Tony’s awful, racist “comedy” routine that kicked off the event (it was so offensive that not even the Trump crowd laughed at the worst jokes). I’ve seen reports that the campaign reviewed the set before the event and axed a joke that called Kamala Harris a “cunt”, which is interesting because the crowd would have gone wild for that line. Sid Rosenberg followed, delivering an expletive-filled 5 minutes that I’ve never seen at a political event. Otherwise, after going to rallies all summer, the extreme messaging has become strangely routine.
But my interests are in the Trump supporters more than in Trump and his political loyalists. The thing that stood out to me most on Sunday was how much the crowd had an appetite for a shared hate experience. For example, at all his rallies, Trump has a moment where he points out the Fake News Media. All of us - TV, writers, radio, and photographers - are packed into a designated area about 100 feet from the stage, and when Trump delivers this line, the crowd turns to us to boo and yell. Here’s that moment from Sunday (and truly, friends, I never though I’d get to say I was booed by a packed MSG crowd, but life delivers so many surprises).
This is routine for rallies, but there was something here that I hadn’t felt before. Trump criticized the media few more times during his speech and the crowd tried to get a big round of booing going, except Trump talked over it and they had to stop. This pattern happened throughout the night where speakers hit on a topic that inspired the start of a chant, but the speech continued and the chant was thwarted. One person mentioned Hilary Clinton inspiring an attempt at “Lock her up!”, and many times the crowed tried starting “Send them back!” chants when Trump mentioned the “immigrant invasion”. There was a palpable craving to not just listen to the anger but to participate in it. I think if the campaign had realized this and wanted to encourage it, they could have harnessed the crowd and really created a frenzy.
Online, there’s a variation on this phenomenon, where people share stories designed to outrage the MAGAs or to belittle others, with the hope that it becomes a focus for the rest of the group to join in.
It emphasizes for me that one of the driving factors for the community this election is the desire to participate in a big, shared MAGA experience. A shared mission was also really important to the QAnon movement in 2020, and fueled the insurrection. There are still no plans for any organized demonstrations or protests from the Trump crowd, but it feels like they are waiting - craving - instructions from Trump to do something. If and when he does, I expect a lot of people to mobilize. They need this and I think they want that a MAGA adventure maybe even more than they want to win the election.
I am a very poor forecaster, but I don’t think Trump is going to win. If he does, I am very worried about how the MAGA movement “celebrates” in the coming months, but I will write more about that later this week.
In the meantime, my plans are still to go to Atlanta to watch for election night demonstrations as votes are counted, but Trump is starting to poke at Pennsylvania on TruthSocial. If it looks like he pushes for protests of the vote there, you will see me in Philadelphia.
