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US-POLITICS-VOTE-TRUMP
Trump, rock star of anger, mesmerizes followers
SOUTHAVEN, United States, Oct 5, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Donald Trump closed his
speech with a lofty call against fear and division in next month’s midterm
elections — having just spent an hour stirring exactly that.
Like an angry rock star, Trump whipped up the crowd of more than 10,000 in
Southaven, Mississippi this week with warnings that a Democratic retaking of
Congress on November 6 will lead, pretty much, to the United States’
collapse.
Democrats will “plunge our country into chaos,” he told the southern
Republicans.
Democrats will end border controls. They’ll invite in “deadly drugs and
ruthless gangs.” They’ll destroy savings accounts and “turn America into
Venezuela.”
The apocalyptic warnings — each time drawing a massive, synchronized “boo”
from the almost uniformly white crowd — were a master class in sowing
division.
Trump has been repeating that message relentlessly in MAGA, or “Make
America Great Again,” rallies around the country ahead of the midterms.
And in Mississippi, his audience was mesmerized.
“A vote for Republicans is a vote to reject the Democrat politics of anger,
destruction, chaos, and to come together as neighbors, as citizens, as
Americans,” Trump told the arena.
In fact, what the crowd had come for was to express that very same anger —
the anger fueling Trump’s self-declared mission “to save America from
socialism, to save America from decay.”
One man in a cowboy hat and T-shirt from the NRA gun lobby group listened
with both hands held aloft, as if in rapture at a Pentecostal prayer service.
– Bogeymen –
Foreigners and even many Americans struggle to understand the appeal of a
president who has disrupted everything from international alliances to social
niceties in a nearly two-year populist and nationalist tornado.
But the billionaire real estate magnate clearly knows his working class
voters, tapping into their red-blooded patriotism and responding to
grievances over what they see as a liberal-left assault on traditional white
values, jobs and identity.
In Mississippi, he ran through an ever-growing litany of right-wing
bogeymen, prompting theatrical choruses of boos and hisses from around the
arena — not that any prompt was needed.
“There’s a group called globalists,” he said in a kind of conspiratorial
whisper. “Boo!”
“Fake news,” “dishonest” journalists. “Boo!”
Fiercest derision was reserved for Democratic senators trying to stop
Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, a distinguished conservative
judge, over allegations that he sexually assaulted a fellow teen while a
schoolboy.
Trump had previously toed a relatively nuanced line, insisting on support
for his nominee, while accepting that the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford,
gave “credible” and moving testimony of the alleged assault in a Senate
hearing.
This time, he ditched the presidential demeanor, mocking the California
professor for not being able to remember important details surrounding the
alleged assault — even if her description of the attack itself was searingly
specific.
Over and over, he goaded the woman, speaking darkly of a time when
unsubstantiated rape allegations will ruin the lives of men everywhere.
The crowd clapped and cheered.
– Savior –
Opponents rarely take into account that Trump can be genuinely funny, going
off script with impromptu, self-deprecating jokes about his ego.
At an event with electrical engineers in Philadelphia, also this week, he
wondered whether a hard hat given to him by the union would mess up his
famously intricate blond hair.
“Am I having a good hair day?” the possibly most powerful man in the world
mused to laughter.
But even the humor serves mainly to remind everyone that Trump and Trump
alone matters.
As he told supporters all this week, the big reason Republican legislators
are in trouble at the midterms is that he’s not on the ballot.
“They say if I was on the ticket, everybody would vote and it would be a
landslide,” he claimed in Mississippi.
And while he’d come to Southaven ostensibly to speak on behalf of a local
Republican Senate candidate, he made clear that the real motive was his own
reelection in two years.
“2020 is looking really easy,” he said in the opening line of his speech.
Passionate supporters are unlikely to disagree.
“God, we thank you for Donald Trump,” a preacher said in a mass prayer just
before the president stepped through blue curtains.
“Amen,” the crowd boomed, then chanted: “USA, USA.”
BSS/AFP/MRI/0835 hrs