Jason Irwin: Witness to History

My Experience at the Trump Rally, July 13, 2024, Butler, PA

If you know me at all, or my left-leaning politics, you probably wonder why in the hell I’d jump into the lion’s den and attend a Trump rally. What did I hope to discover? Maybe some kind of one-sided proof, or justification, the way people use the Bible to justify any point of view? Maybe I wanted to see that demography of Americans who I believed had gone bat-shit crazy, following Trump as if he were otherworldly, some post-truth savior, holding them in the palm of his hands, the way I imagined Mussolini and Hitler had done to many in their respective countries. After all, the Supreme Court had just handed Trump immunity for any official acts he had performed while president. Many, including myself wondered if these “official acts” included calling on Seal Team 6 to take out a political opponent, or Trump himself, shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. I had never seen an American president act, nor heard one speak the way Donald Trump spoke, and continues to do so, with such confidence and flare.

I admit, that over the past few months, I’ve watched too many “Crazy Trump Fans” videos on Youtube, where some journalist interviewed MAGAHEADS about Trumpian policies from the economy, crime, and the Radical Left’s multitudinous betrayals, to Trump’s favorite scapegoat: illegal immigrants, those “monsters” who are “poisoning our blood.” The interviews are funny, but of course the journalist asking the questions no doubt brings his own biases. Are Americans really that ignorant? They are portrayed much like the news media (both sides of the divide) portray Muslims in the Middle East. Usually, the only depiction we get are either of oil sheiks or bearded terrorists who abuse women and blowup buildings. My plan, if I had a plan, was either to interview some people myself, hoping my questions would not enrage them, or to find a Youtube reporter and be interviewed myself.

After I parked my car, the first thing I noticed was a tent across the street selling T-shirts. These T-shirts read “Jo and the Ho Got to Go!” Catchy, yes. Funny, sure. I admit it made me laugh. A quick Google search, however, will lead you to many anti-Trump T-shirts, as well, though none that I could find were as unsavory as “Jo and the Ho.” One did include Trump’s face along with various ticks that read “Know Your Parasites.”

It was 93 degrees and humid, smoldering in the cloudless sky. I started walking down Evans City Road towards the Butler Farm Show grounds, where the rally was taking place. Half the road had been cut away for construction, part of the bi-partisan Infrastructure deal passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in 2021. Great news for the folks of Butler County, but bad for me. The Farm Show was a mile away. I had to walk in the road amid passing cars in the heat and humidity. Did I mention I have a prosthetic leg? Did I mention that it is blue? I wore shorts that day, not because of the heat, but because I have found that people are more polite and conciliatory when they can actually see my leg.

Once there I found my friend Lauren, a retired Methodist minister. I have known Lauren since I was fifteen. We share a love of music, literature, politics, and weirdos as well as a mutual dislike and dismay for the man of the day: Donald J. Trump. No, we had not come as pilgrims to be baptized in the fire. We were there as observers, to experience and understand the MAGAHEADS, in all their beautiful and terrifying weirdness.

When I spotted Lauren in the crowd, he was talking to a man wearing a sandwich board. Sandwich boards, along with golf balls and selfie-sticks and weapons of any kind were not permitted past the security tents. The man was a graduate of West Point and a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U. S. Army. The sandwich board read “I served 21 years as an Infantryman, Paratrooper, and a Ranger. I feel that President Trump is a threat to the US Constitution and our standing, and will have a civil, respectful discussion of the upcoming election with anyone.”

He admitted to Lauren his surprise at how civil the responses he’d gotten so far.

The line to get into the area where the rally was to take place was a long snake. We might have stood waiting for an hour, maybe longer. Because I have a prosthetic leg, I knew I could not handle that. The sandwich board man even offered to see if he could find me a wheelchair, but we spotted a rally worker, who directed us to the A.D.A (Americans with Disabilities Act) security tent. We passed through the metal detectors within minutes, only to find out that there was no seating available.

It made me think of those anti-abortionists who won’t even concede their stance for rape or incest and how many Republicans fight like hell to make sure there are no barriers preventing a child from being born, only to leave them and their parents to their fate afterwards, fighting just as hard to prevent them from receiving much needed social services like WIC and, food stamps and affordable housing. But then once they made their way through the tube (or security tent) they were S.O.L. on their own, along with their parents. They did not feel they needed to provide any further services like affordable healthcare or a chair.

It was 2:30pm and all the people in the grandstands behind the stage had been there since the early morning. The first speaker wasn’t scheduled to go on for another half hour. Trump wouldn’t talk until at least 5, but probably more like 6 or 6:30pm. 

Lauren and I made our way to an area that was about 60 yards from the stage. A giant American flag hung suspended from two equally giant cranes. The grandstand (three sets of bleachers) stood behind. The stage itself, was bookended by two giant screens where a pre-recorded message by Trump played every twenty minutes or so. “Swamp the Vote!” he yelled, telling his followers to make sure they voted anyway they were able. This included mail-in ballots, something that was considered fraudulent, or fake, during the last election, as was anything and everything Trump disagreed with, including of course the news media, who’s encampment was just to the left of where Lauren and I stood, sweating, waiting amid a swarming sea of people, who, other than the MAGA gear they wore, looked a lot like us and the people I grew up with and loved in my hometown of Dunkirk, NY.

I saw couples holding hands, laughing, smiling—young and old. They seemed genuinely happy, excited even, as if finally, they found a place where they belonged, as well as a leader whom they loved, one who respected and loved them in return. Someone even remarked that it was like Lalapalooza. Though of course most of these people were white, and that’s not to say that white people can’t and don’t suffer or feel disenfranchised. I am white and so is Lauren. I also grew up in a working-class family. In Trump world, though he is as far from working-class than any president in my lifetime, the working-class has been elevated to something that hardly makes sense. What exactly is working-class today? It is a far cry from the factory work my grandfather and father did. This term in many ways has pigeonholed, ignored and left out swathes of the population.

After about twenty minutes, Lauren and I moved a little closer to the gate on the right side of the encampment where the various news media outlets were set up. I leaned against the fence for a while. Members of the press out cases of bottled water to the people in my area. One of them, a man with one hand reminded the crowd that being a member of the press did not make him their enemy, referring to the many times Trump called out the press as The Enemy of the People! One of them even gave me a folding chair so I could sit for a while.

Some weird, invisible DJ spun an eclectic mix of tunes: Abba, Guns N’ Roses, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles and Rage Against the Machine.

Despite a couple of women getting in a brief spat, and a few chants of “F@#$k Joe Biden” traveling around the crowd like the Wave, the crowd was calm and polite. They reminded me of the people I grew up with in Dunkirk, NY, a one-time steel town on the shores of Lake Erie.

Maybe these MAGA devotees weren’t the nut jobs the news and late-night talk shows made them out to be. Still, I had my doubts. I had seen crazy counter protestors before. Back in 2007 I went with the local Thomas Merton Center to Washington D.C. to protest George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Walking across the Potomac, on our way to the Pentagon, a large crowd of angry white people screamed insults at us and members of Code Pink who were in front of us. At the time I thought it could not get much worse than W.

Finally, a few moments before 6pm “God Bless the U.S.A.,” by Country singer Lee Greenwood blasted from the stack of speakers hanging to the right and left of the stage. This was the song that ushered Donald Trump to the stage like some messianic gameshow host/wrestler. Imagine him flexing like Hulk Hogan or jumping off the top ropes like Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka!

Joe Biden has called Donald Trump a threat to American democracy. Does that make a lonely 20-year-old kid from the suburbs want to assassinate a political candidate?

On October 27, 2018, Forty-six-year-old Robert Gregory Bowers of Baldwin, a suburb less than five miles from Bethel Park, walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill and shot and killed eleven worshipers inside. He was upset that members of that synagogue had went down to the U.S. border with Mexico to help migrants. Critics of Trump have said that his high-charged, sometimes racist rhetoric has contributed to a rise in extremism and is seen as a green light for violence. Trump, of course, blamed the media and their “Fake News.”

“Brutality,” Albert Camus wrote, in his Nobel Laureate speech, “is never temporary.” This statement bears witness to America today, in fact to the entire world, and though some may argue that Donald Trump and/or Trumpism holds no responsibility for this brutality, his words, I would argue, tell a different story.

The shooting itself was surreal. As I balanced myself on the metal fence surrounding the news media’s encampment, trying to get a better view while people around me hit the ground—a woman wearing a baseball cap that read “Jesus is my Savior and Donald Trump is my President—scurried under the fence and hid behind the wheel of a tractor. Even after Trump hi the ground and others in suits fell on him, there was a part of me that thought, This is hoax. It wasn’t until members of the Secret Service, armed with machine guns flooded the stage that Lauren and I looked at one another with “This is for real!” expressions, that I understood I was witnessing an assassination attempt.

Just moments before, Trump talked about crime in American cities and instructed his team to put up a chart on the big screens that showed how illegal immigration had skyrocketed under Joe Biden’s watch. It seemed fitting, somehow.

Once Trump was back on his feet, he raised a defiant fist before being ushered away, was and led away, though we only knew he was bloody from the photos Lauren had taken with his camera and telephoto lens. We presumed he hadn’t been injured, or at least not seriously.

Then, Secret Service told the crowd to evacuate and they did so, to my continued surprise after flashing middle fingers and chanting “We’re coming for you” at the press, as if they had shot Trump, in an orderly fashion. This was a relief. Having a prosthetic leg, I am unable to run, and if things turned ugly, if people became violent and law enforcement started pepper-spraying, or shooting into the crowd, I honestly don’t know what I would have done. I am thankful to my fellow attendees, most of whom I am certain do not share my politics, for not becoming violent, for not causing a riot or stampede. I’m also thankful that Trump survived, his raising a defiant fist, after being only millimeters away from death, seemed heroic, even to me. Could this assassination attempt be the best thing, at least politically that could happen to him? I cannot imagine the movie version of this day being anywhere as dramatic, or sexy, unless maybe J-Lo played one of the Secret Service and someone younger and hunkier, maybe Brad Pitt, played the president. Besides, it was also a sad day.

Corey Comperatore, a retired fire-fighter, a devoted husband, father of two girls was killed, as was the would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and two others besides Trump were injured.

What did I come away with, never being in danger myself, never fearing for my safety, other than American politics has gone mad again? Had I been converted? Am I now a die-in-the wool MAGAHEAD? Far from it.

A friend who I’d recently reconnected with after a couple decades wanted to know when “I drank the liberal Kool-Aid.” I replied that my antipathy for Donald Trump went back decades, long before he ever thought of running for office, before he was even a household name with his TV reality show The Apprentice.

Growing up in Western New York, 480 miles from The City, via the Thruway, I remember hearing about the Central Park Five on the news: five Black kids, the youngest was only thirteen, who were accused of gang-raping a young woman as she jogged through the park. During the trial, Donald Trump, then an up-and-coming real estate magnate, took out an ad not only calling for the return of the death penalty, but for the five teenagers to be executed. The full-page advertisements were published in all four of the city’s major newspapers. The five were convicted and later, exonerated after Matias Reyes, a serial rapist, confessed to the assault, claiming he was the only perpetrator; DNA evidence confirmed his involvement. Trump never apologized, even after some called him out for his racist and divisive rhetoric.

In the end, we all drink someone’s Kool-Aid. If not Jim Jones’ or Donald Trump’s then maybe Kim Kardashian’s Johnny Depp’s or the people closet to us—a parent’s, a lover’s or a high school football coach. Maybe this polarizing is in our genes, the way some of us love cilantro, while others claim it taste like soap or dead bugs, just as some of us see Donald Trump as a would-be dictator, while other see him as a messianic figure, the hero with the white hat, who will, part the seas of their discontent and lead them to some promised land.

Will Donald Trump, after cheating death, turn the other cheek as they say, and have a change of heart. Will he reflect on this moment, and try, to lessen the nation’s divide, to unite us the way we appeared, briefly, to be united, after 9/11? I wouldn’t bet on it, but who knows.

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Copyright 2024 Jason Irwin.

Jason Irwin’s poetry collections include A Blister of Stars (Low Ghost, 2016). He lives in Pittsburgh.