Written by Jason Edelstein
Above: Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump arrives in Colorado Springs. Photo by Jason Edelstein
“I see a mosquito. Right now, I don’t like mosquitos too much, folks. Get out of here you mosquito. I never minded mosquitos. Now, I’m not loving them. I must be honest.” – Donald Trump, Colorado Springs, Sept. 17, 2016
On Saturday, Sept. 17, Donald Trump held a rally at a jet hangar on the Colorado Springs airport runway. That day Trump led Hillary Clinton by four points in a general election poll done by Emerson. Colorado is a state that could easily swing to Clinton or Trump.
Protesters walked through the parking lot waving Mexican flags. One attendee in the line remarked to her husband, “They’re carrying an Israeli flag or maybe Palestine.” The passengers on the bus were mostly middle-aged and older, mostly white, and most of them were wearing some combination of Trump campaign apparel and American flag-themed clothing. They rested their “Make America Great Again” and “Trump Pence” signs on their laps and bubbled with excitement as the bus pulled up to the Jet Center.
Jill Casperson, a business owner from Colorado Springs who sat beside her husband, said, “We have kids and grandkids, we worry about what’s going to happen for them.” When envisioning a future for them she said she wanted, “A really good one. Where they can earn, you know, a great living, and be prosperous, and have a great country still.”
Jill Casperson’s husband John Stuart, who owns an automotive repair business, said, “People aren’t spending money.” He believes that Trump “is going to produce a lot of jobs by stopping these companies that move to Mexico and Japan, and [he’s going to] put a stop to that immediately.”
The couple brought up the idea of term limits in congress: “Get rid of the old dead wood!” said Casperson. “They die; they die in there!” The distaste for career politicians has been central to Trump’s campaign. Trump proudly states that his campaign is self-funded and his supporters admire his political incorrectness and unabashed confidence in fixing what he calls a broken system.
Trump’s speeches operate on an effective formula; short sentences either listing issues or enlisting fears, and then a promise, usually some form of the phrase “I will fix it,” or for anyone in the audience who might doubt him, “believe me.” The majority of his speech was difficult to disagree with. His economic plan is something every American should be able to get behind, but it lacks depth. He summed it up with “three beautiful words,” as he called them. He asked the crowd if they knew what those words are and as an ensemble the hangar filled with shouts of “Jobs, jobs, jobs!”
He assured the crowd that under his administration, ISIS, a product, he said, of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Clinton’s friends, will be defeated. “I will give you good results,” he said, “Don’t worry about how I get there, okay? Please.”
Trump made a plea to the African American voting block, “What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose?” African American voters are consistently pandered during the election season and then forgotten about after Election Day. Rapper and Activist Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike, said on an interview on Atlanta’s Hot 107.9 after the shooting of Alton Sterling, “[…] whoever you vote for, demand something. And if you don’t get it, stay home. Stay home because your life can’t get no worse than it is. And it can’t get nothing but better once you decide to.”
Jamelle Bouie, Chief Political Correspondent for Slate Magazine, commented on Trump’s rhetoric towards black voters. He found Trump’s words insulting, “it sounds as if black voters have not actually considered what their best interests are, that they haven’t thought about this at all, that they’ve just been fooled and taken for a ride by democratic politicians.”
Bouie said if Trump really cared about black voters, “he would approach them as people who do in fact have something to lose, and do in fact have to be convinced, and do in fact have interests that maybe aren’t being served.” Trump said on black unemployment and poverty, “I will fix it.”
Juanita Johnson wears a gold “Make America Great Again” hat. She is a teacher in District 2 Colorado Springs and a pastor, and one of the few black women at the Trump rally. Johnson believes in “making America great again.” To Johnson a great America means a strong America, an America, as she quotes Trump, that comes first.
Johnson believes America was last great in the 90s under the Clinton administration, “it was stronger. After Bush, America kinda fell. I see where Obama has done some great things, but I believe we have a long way to go.”
Johnson crossed partisan lines to support Trump. “He’s not the status quo,” said Johnson. “We’ve had a lot of politicians but he has nothing to gain, he’s a billionaire.”
There’s a divide between how people interpret Trump’s wealth and success.
Johnson said, “I think for the reason he said so, he wants to make America great again. […] He doesn’t have anything else to gain. He’s 70 years old. He doesn’t need the money; he doesn’t need to buy the lobbyists, he doesn’t need to do all of that so why else? Except to bring money back into our country. Can I help the students in the colleges, is there someway I can help the military be great again. What is his motive? He has no motives,” continued Johnson. “He’s already proven with his own children that he can do something as far as leading a next generation to do something better. His children are millionaires.”
Johnson believes that “God’s will will be done. You can’t stop him if it’s God’s will. If he’s a messenger to say, if nothing else, I believe he’s a messenger,” she laughed when asked to confirm if she believes Trump is a messenger of God.
“Well, God can use anything,” she said. “In the bible He used a donkey.” Johnson is not alone. Pastor Steve from Discover Ministries posts videos on YouTube outlining Trump’s role as a prophet. These videos earn over a million views and utilize bible passages, people’s dreams, and Trump’s name itself as evidence.
Concerning Trump’s stance on race issues, police brutality, and high incarceration rates of black men, Johnson said, “he’ll do the best he can, but our people have to help our people.” She believes that liberal social programs are keeping black people down. “The black people need to stop depending on what Democrats say, keeping them on welfare, keeping them looking at minimum wage, you know, are you worth $16 an hour? I don’t care if they made it to $20 an hour. That’s all you’re worth? That’s the message? Keeping them down. I believe the republicans message is, ‘Hey, get outta here, get out here and start your own business.’”
As a teacher, Johnson views the largest problem as the disparity between different public schools. She has noticed little differences between the levels of education of Hispanics in middle school and high school, and that she hopes to see “these little children that’s from different cultures get the help they need in terms of education.”
In Trump’s speech at the rally, he said, I’ve “[…] outlined a plan to provide every disadvantaged child in America the ability to choose the private, public, magnate, or religious school of his or her choice.” Trump provided no explanation on how this will be done.
Douglas Eifield, an ex-military who used to work in commercial refrigeration believes that America has always been great, but there is currently too much clutter in the government.
“Most of our agencies are two and three over,” Eifield said, “why do we have a redundancy? You know you go to one committee or one group and they sit down and start to look, and say wait a minute, we got to send you to those over there. Those people are doing the same thing that they’re doing, just a little differently.”
Eifield, like many Trump supporters, believes that the government has overstepped its bounds and has become corrupt. He believes the government’s role is simply to protect its people, “They weren’t put in here for social security, they weren’t put for welfare they weren’t put for any of these programs. […] Their job is the safety of the American people.”
Trump is focusing a lot of his campaign on safety, and described the dystopian state of the government: its crumbling infrastructure, the violence in inner cities, terrorists coming into the country from Syria, rapists crossing the border from Mexico, drugs pouring across the border from Mexico, the jobs leaving the country and going to Mexico or China, and the immanent threat of nuclear war from North Korea.
Trump depicted a frightening reality, but assured the crowd that the country will be safe again. Towards the end of his speech, he made a call for unity within the country and asked the country to envision his American dream.
“Imagine,” Trump said, “what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one American flag.” In his dream, Americans are working together to “rebuild this nation,” with American energy, American steel, American planes, American cars, and American ships.
Many Americans do not feel as included in Trump’s vision of “one people.” Some feel a more accurate slogan for Trump’s campaign is “Make America White Again.”
Outside the rally protesters gathered on the opposite side of the street. Trump supporters drove by the protesters in pickup trucks, revving their engines, honking their horns, occasionally yelling expletives.
A police officer stood on the median keeping people out of the middle of the street. A man wearing an American flag suit stood on the double yellow line, and the cop yelled to him, “Pick a side!”
The counter-protester side was filled with chants of “Build that wall!” “Trump! Trump! Trump!” and “Rayyyy-Cist Rayyyy-Cist” as they made slow karate chop motions in the direction of the protesters. Among the chants was a woman shouting, “Hitlery’s gonna kill us! Hitlery! Killary!” and a man yelled, “Kiss our ass you fuckheads!” Eventually the chants dissolved into simple “USA! USA! USA!” chants which were matched by the protesters’ side.
Jeanne Meadows, a former Bernie Sanders supporter, said to the Trump supporters, “I love you, so nice to see you, hugs for everybody,” as they honked their horns at her.
“We’re saying we’re not going to put up with the racism and the bully tactics, I mean can you imagine if he really were president?” questioned Meadows. “He’d make enemies of the whole world against us. We would be in deep trouble. So we’re out here trying to save our country from that disaster.” Meadows believes Republicans are being misled by Trump, that they are buying into his political incorrectness, and they like the fact that he is an outsider.
The issue, she said, is that “they’re not realizing this is a political system. You have to be political. You have to know how to communicate. You have to know how to get along with other countries.”
Deyanira Aldana, a Hispanic woman protesting, chanted “We are the immigrants! The mighty mighty immigrants! Fighting for justice. And for our families!” She is a member of United We Dream Action, the largest C4 immigrant union in the country. She is undocumented and here to stay. She is worried that if Trump became president, she and her family would be deported “back to a place that is no longer our home, back to a place that’s rooted in poverty and violence.” She’s “most afraid [for] [her] mother who is chronically ill, that something will happen to her because of the deportation.”
Aldana was one of a few people inside the rally that interrupted Trump’s speech. She said she was escorted out peacefully.
Aldana attempted to fathom why people are interested in Trump, “I honestly don’t understand it,” she said. “All I can tell you is that I’m here supporting the 12 million undocumented people because I know I’m on the right side of the moral compass and I’m rooted in the side of love and equality and what they’re rooted in is hatred, xenophobia, and racism.”
Protestors chanted: “No Trump! No way! No KKK, no racist USA!”
Crystal Cravens, a young black woman, was denied admittance into the rally. Cravens had a sign that said, “Make America Black Again!” which she explained is a commentary on America being fiscally in the black at the end of the year.
Caverns cannot understand how people are still finding good in Trump’s message, “we haven’t forgotten Central Park 5,” she said, “He got a whole newsprint to slander five innocent black men.”
“We cannot have this man for president, because what does that look like for me?” she asked. “Where do I go? What am I supposed to do when there are people that are supporting a man that is also a rapist, racist, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it he’s done it, he even dragged a gold star family. So what is it about him that I can say I align with him, I feel safe with him as our president and commander in chief?”
Crevans explained that there are so many issues facing the black community. “Not once has Donald Trump looked into the black community and what actually affects us, all he said to us is what do we have to lose,” she said. “We are largely forgotten about. We are pandered to, we are used and manipulated for props to try to get them more attention, but no. We’ve seen over and over again that we need the black vote, we need the brown vote, but then what are our politicians actually doing to help our communities? Damn near nothing.”