It was an hour before the start of Donald Trump’s rally on Tuesday in Marietta, Georgia, and the line around the venue stretched about 400 meters. With capacity for 2,700 attendees, the room had already begun to fill with followers. The event was scheduled for seven thirty in the afternoon and the first followers had begun to arrive around one o’clock. Not everyone could enter.
If there is one thing that is not in short supply in Georgia, it is political enthusiasm. When the possibility of early voting was opened this Tuesday, 310,980 people came to vote in person, according to the records of the Georgia Secretary of State. The previous maximum had fluctuated around 130,000 people. A few Trump supporters wore the ‘I Voted’ sticker.
Although the energy was high before the rally, many people have noticed that crowds at Trump rallies have thinned in recent months as the Republican mogul’s speeches morph into hours-long ramblings. Kamala Harris also said it during the presidential debate in September.
“I’m going to do something really unusual and encourage you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies. “It’s a really interesting thing to see,” Harris said during that debate. “You will see that during his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter and says that windmills cause cancer; You will also notice that people begin to leave the rally before it ends due to exhaustion and boredom.”
The Guardian newspaper accepted the proposal and went to this Tuesday’s rally to verify that around three out of every ten attendees had left before 10:15 p.m., when Trump finished speaking. In his defense it must be said that the Republican candidate showed up an hour and a half late.
Seven minutes into the speech, a dozen people had already left as Trump recited a litany of complaints about inflation, schools, the quality of cars, cities, immigration and the possibility of a third world war.
Twenty minutes in, while Trump was saying that “murderers” who immigrate illegally represent a threat to the United States greater than inflation, Ryan Taylor walked towards his car. “I live an hour away and I have my son in the car waiting,” said Taylor, who runs a podcasts. “He didn’t want to go in, he’s a teenager,” he added, referring to his son, who is 15 years old.
Haley Lummus, of Jasper, Georgia, left at 9:22 p.m., just as Trump called Harris a “tax queen” and complained about the loss of value of his properties in San Francisco. “We had to wait a while for him to come on stage,” Lummus said. “Everyone was doing the wave and a lot of people got excited when he started cheering,” he added. Why then was he leaving sooner? “I’ve been working and I’m tired,” she responded. By that time, about 50 people had already left.
Five young men with the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ [Haz a EEUU grande otra vez] written on their brand new red caps, they left shortly before half past nine, while Trump maintained that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza would not have taken place with him as president. The five of them seemed slightly bewildered and out of place, even there. “We’re from Denmark, and although we don’t really care at all about American politics, we wanted to experience it firsthand,” Gustave said.
Staying about 15 minutes away, when Gustave and his friends found out about the rally, they said: ‘why not?’. The event had been a “delirium” and “something similar to [la serie de TV] The Bachelor,” they said as they left. They left early to avoid traffic problems.
Another 50 attendees left in the next ten minutes. Four of them had been expelled. “Some of us entered with flags to shout ‘Free Palestine,’” said a young man who did not want to give his name. Trump was talking at the time about ending tax levies on tips. “They snatched our flags, they booed us, they kicked us, but I still support Trump,” said the young man.
They also complained of mistreatment by a large security guard in front of them who had been provoked as they wandered around the edges of the room. A few minutes later, one of his group was detained by Secret Service agents.
The flow of people heading to the exits at 9:50 p.m. was constant. Trump was talking at the time about an “immigrant invasion” that was “stealing American jobs.” Most of those who were leaving said that they had to work the next day or that they had a babysitter to relieve.
Marietta is a metropolitan city of Atlanta, and the bulk of Trump supporters generally live in rural communities some distance away.
Tuesday’s rally was the second Trump rally attended by Season Poole, a former Army mechanic specializing in diesel engines. A resident of Social Circle (Georgia), two weeks earlier he had attended another Republican rally in North Carolina. While Trump talked about “foreign gang members and immigrant criminals in prison,” Poole thought about schoolwork and the hour-long car ride ahead. At least 500 people had already left by that time.
Voni Miller would have stayed if it had been in her power. “It made me cry,” she said. “I cried when he talked about making a change; You know, close the border, change things; “If Kamala wins we are going to be very screwed because she doesn’t seem able to decide what she thinks about anything.”
“[Trump] It made me cry because he’s giving up a lot, he doesn’t have to do this for us, you know what I mean, he has all the money but he keeps getting shot and people say horrible things about him, but he’s doing it because he wants a change. for the US and it has been very emotional,” he added.
So why are you leaving? “Actually, I’m leaving early because my phone battery is dying and I have a Tesla, so I can’t get into it.” [sin el teléfono]”. “It’s a real bummer because it meant a lot to me to be here and I just wasn’t going to be able to get into my car.”
By 10:50 p.m., about a third of the audience had abandoned Trump, who was speaking about the importance of protecting police officers from potential civil lawsuits for misconduct when they are truly “doing something good.” .
Stephen Rosenbaum was walking toward the car at that moment, accompanied by his son. “I think I get more out of these rallies than anything else, and I hope it’s the same for others,” he said. “He shows the human side; “We saw the Butler rally live on television when it happened, it was terrible,” he said about the first attack against Trump. “Right before everything that happened happened, he had said ‘all we want is to make the country a better place.’”
Rosenbaum also said he had been to several of Trump’s rallies. “We wanted to see it, see it in real life, see it live,” he said. But aren’t you going to stay for the entire rally? “Tomorrow he has to go to school,” he responded, pointing to his son. “And it’s gotten to the part where, I mean, we’ve seen enough, we know more or less how it’s going to end, we just wanted to see it live, you understand?”
Translation of Francisco de Zárate
#people #leave #Trump #rallies #theyre
