The Appeal of a Trump Rally

A photo from the Trump rally I attended in Topeka

I’ve wanted to write about my Trump rally experience in Topeka last October for a while now.  Writing a public post about politics in this day and age is a line I’m not sure I wanted to cross.  So I’ll see how this goes!

I attended the rally with a friend of mine and two of my daughters and a friend of theirs.  My friend and I arrived around 11:30 to get in line for the 6:30 rally. There was already a huge line when we got there and we weren’t sure we were going to get in or not.  Shortly after we arrived there was a guy who started at the front door and walked through the winding line counting how many people were in line at that point.  At that time he counted 3,500 people, so we were pretty confident we would get in.  The arena holds a little more than 10,000 people for the rally.

I think it’s funny how the mainstream media and the Trump haters of the world cover these rallies and report on them in a completely opposite way than what they are really about and what really happens.  It’s a completely different experience than you might hear in the media.

First of all, I have probably never been around so many nice, genuine, down to earth people than I was around that day.  Within five minutes we became friends with the people we were in line with.  Both the people in front of us and the people behind us.  The family behind us was a married couple that brought their two children.  They live in a small town in Oklahoma and made the five hour drive to see President Trump in person.  They were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.  This was a common theme of the day.

There were men and women of all ages and races in attendance.  MSNBC or CNN might tell you that it’s nothing but a bunch of old white people in attendance, but there were plenty of African American people and Hispanic people as well.  I’m not sure if they showed them on camera or not, but they were all dressed head to toe in Trump and American flag gear like everyone else.

Everyone we encountered was so nice and accommodating.  I did not witness one disagreement or fight or scuffle or anything like that the entire time we were there.  Everyone was there to have a great time and was looking forward to hearing the President speak.

When we finally go into the arena we had to go through security and metal detectors which made it a cumbersome and slow process, but nobody was complaining about it.  We had pretty decent seats considering there were so many people ahead of us in line.  We still had to wait a while until the speech, but the people kept pouring in until it was packed to the rafters.

There were some speakers before Trump came on and I believe he was running a little bit late.  I remember there was a bit of a lull in the action and all of a sudden someone got on the microphone and said “Ladies and Gentlemen…the President of the United States, Donald Trump!”  I’ll never forget the roar of the crowd when he walked out on stage.  The man standing behind me was screaming and yelling “We love you, Trump!  YEAH!”  Over and over again.  I couldn’t hear much of anything else.  It was so loud in there it was like being at a football game of 80,000 people when everyone is cheering for the defense.  President Trump started speaking and we couldn’t hear him for the first 20 seconds because everyone was still cheering.  Finally the cheering died down so we could hear the speech.

This rally happened on the day Justice Kavanaugh was approved as a Supreme Court justice.  When Trump announced the news, the roof about blew off the place.  Everyone was very happy.

Rush Limbaugh has made a very successful career of pointing out the bias and hypocrisy in the media.  Trump does the same thing.  When Trump fights back, his supporters love it.  Conservatives and Republicans have been unjustly called racists, homophobes, islamaphobes, or whatever other “phobe” you can think of for far too long.  Trump is our voice and a Trump rally is our release.  It’s one way people can express their frustration at a media that lies and misrepresents them and the Democrats and liberals that do the same.  When Trump fights back and Tweets, we like it.  Personally, I wish he would do it more.  And to be honest, a lot of us get a kick out of people that don’t understand it or understand Trump.  We are amused that it triggers some people. We wish they would join us, but it doesn’t really bother us that they don’t.  We don’t have hate in our hearts.  There was no hatred at the rally.  I’ve been on Twitter for quite a while.  All the hate and vitriol I see comes from Democrats, liberals, progressives and leftists.  I rarely, if ever, see hate coming from Republicans or Conservatives or Trump supporters.  For the most part, I see Trump supporters as hard working, having strong family values, love of their country and wanting a great country for their children and grandchildren.  They are also fiscally conservative and support legal immigration.  They don’t like people that break the law and they don’t want to support them financially.

As I get older, I see a huge difference between city life and small town life.  When I travel to Manhattan, Kansas, or Branson, Missouri or other small towns in the Midwest, people are much nicer than they are in the city.  I think city living stresses people out and brings out the worst in people.  Going to a Trump rally is like going to a small town.  Everyone is polite, courteous and nice.  This is what the mainstream media should report, but for some reason they don’t and won’t.  They want to lie and report that there are a lot of bad people that go to those rallies when in fact the opposite is true.

The Trump rally I attended was a great event and I’ll go again if I get the opportunity.  It’s was such a positive and uplifting experience that I understand why some people travel from long distances to go to them.  I wish the “other side” of the aisle and the Never Trumpers would understand, but I’m not mad at them that they don’t.  For some reason I’m made to feel they are mad at me for going and supporting Trump.  I just don’t think there’s any reason to be.

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