By Quin Hillyer
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Toto the dog wasn’t needed in Mobile, Ala., Friday night
to pull the curtain from behind The Great and Mighty Trump. Trump let his own
curtain flutter open, showing to much of the audience the humbug within.
In an hour-long verbal meanderthon at half-filled
Ladd-Peebles Stadium, Trump allowed an atmosphere of electric excitement to
dissipate, and then he split town without his promised post-show press
conference. As I left the stadium, a red-hatted lady of my acquaintance spotted
me and pulled me aside, saying: “Somebody needs to tell that man when to shut
the you-know-what up. People were leaving in droves.”
Well, not entirely droves, but by my estimate, about
15–20 percent of the 18,000 or so attendees — Trump publicity organs had
earlier said they expected up to 35,000 — had filed out before Trump wound up
his many-versed hymn to his own toughness and deal-making skills.
The line of the evening belonged to Rob Holbert, a former
press aide to Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi and now the co-publisher of the
port city’s Lagniappe weekly. “That speech was more disjointed,” he said, “than
a skeleton after tumbling down four flights of stairs.”
And I woke up this morning to this e-mail from a retired
professional who is an outspoken conservative and longtime Mobile civic leader:
What happened with Trump? Why was he so late going on stage? Why did he cancel the press conference? Was he insulted by the turnout and had to be talked into going on stage and canceled the press conference because he didn’t want to justify the smaller crowd? Is he a petulant child?
Not to say that Trump’s speech failed to earn some bursts
of enthusiastic applause, or that his Mobile appearance was a total bust.
Still, compared with the remarkable buzz leading up to the tycoon’s visit, the
actual performance was missed opportunity. Typical was this frustrated Facebook
post by a local tea-party leader: “Substance!!!!!!!!! No substance!!!!! . . .
Trump, please stop rambling. Please, do you have a plan???”
That early buzz had been so considerable that some Trump
fans showed up a remarkable seven hours early to get in line for entrance to
the 7 p.m. speech. At 3 p.m., a large, spiffy bus arrived, carrying a number of
Republican state legislators from throughout Alabama. Most said they were
committed to Trump already, although only three (Tim Wadsworth, Ed Henry, and
Barry Moore) were ready to make their endorsements public.
“I’m not sure if I’m for him yet,” said one who asked not
to be identified. “But I like that he’s getting people excited. We need higher
turnout for our side in this election. If Trump can do that for us, that would
be great.”
A little before 6, as the line was moving toward the
gate, one family’s home-made signs, illustrated with clever pictures, stood
out. “Trump: R.I.P. Politically Correct.” “The Trump mobile: Get on or get
left.” Jimmy White, a 52-year-old construction supervisor from Bay Minette (35
miles up the road), was with his daughter Malary Thompson, 30, daughter
Kricket, 20, and son Zach, 18. The elder White said:
This country is ready to go in the opposite direction. That’s why all the people are here: We need drastic change. It seems like we send the politicians up there, and then we don’t ever hear their names again — like Mitch McConnell, what is he even doing? I’m excited about seeing a big huge shakeup [by a President Trump] if it were to work out.
The crowd seemed well mixed socioeconomically, from laborers
to white-collar types to reasonably well-off retirees. But the ethnic mix was,
well, decidedly less diverse, a huge sea of white with only the rarest of black
or Hispanic faces. And although almost everybody there seemed angry at the
federal government, the overriding mood of the event itself was not angry but
excited, even happy — upbeat people waving American flags and wanting to be
part of something good.
When Trump finally took the stage, though, nearly 20
minutes late, he first tapped their anger, not their hopes. “We have
politicians that don’t have a clue!” he yelled. “They’re all talk, no action.
They’re disgraceful!”
On immigration:
Now people are seeing I was right. Did you see that story the other day about that poor girl who was raped, sodomized, tortured, and killed by an illegal immigrant? We’re going to build a wall!
Trump threw in attacks at Hillary Clinton (about her
e-mail scandal) and Jeb Bush (on Common Core and immigration) and pivoted to a
shout-out to his “favorite book,” the Bible. (So said the famously serial
adulterer.)
But he quickly came back again to immigration and an
attack on the concept of birthright citizenship:
Seven and a half of all births in this country are to illegal immigrants. That’s 300,000 babies a year that we all have to take care of. We’re the only place, just about, that’s stupid enough to do it.
But once Trump’s familiar riffs against illegal
immigrants ran out, so did almost all pretense of discussing policy. Again and
again he asserted that foreign countries — China, Japan, and Mexico were his
favorite targets — are taking America to the cleaners because we’re “too dumb”
to negotiate well with them. And that led to what a great, terrific, fantastic,
superb negotiator Trump is and how — repeated ad nauseam — Trump would make
everything right because “we will have unbelievable deals” when he’s in charge.
“Whatever it is, I know how to do things,” he said. “I
just want to make this country so great, and that’s what’s going to happen.”
Oh, and did he mention that he’ll oversee better
negotiations? “I have the hardest, toughest, meanest, smartest, most horrible
people in the world. They’ll be my negotiators.”
As for American power, no problem: “The thing I’ll be
great at? The military, because I am the toughest guy.”
And, in case he didn’t mention money in the prior two
minutes — he referred to his money-making prowess about a gazillion times —
Trump circled back again to his unparalleled, amazing, world-beating,
stupendous ability to turn dross into gold: “I am going to be the greatest
‘jobs president’ that God ever created!”
By this time — 50 minutes into his peroration — the crowd
had more than understood his point, and surely many had started wondering
whether anything Trump said or thought had anything to do with them rather than
with himself. That’s when I noticed how many gaps were beginning to appear in
the sections of the stands that had been filled earlier in the evening, and how
many backs I saw disappearing through the exits.
When Trump finally ended seven or eight minutes later —
with no closing flourish, like a child’s old-fashioned music box that just
wound down into silence — there was no exuberant applause, but a mere shuffling
of feet as people headed for the parking lots. To be sure, some were chattering
approvingly of The Donald, but others were muttering that his speech lacked
substance and focus.
Trump vamoosed quickly: With local and national media
waiting in a holding room, Trump’s staffers manhandled aside a respected local
newscaster so Trump’s car could whisk him away, in silence, to his waiting 757.
Or maybe it was a hot air balloon, looking for another Oz
to grace with his extraordinary, superlative, amazing, greatest-ever presence.
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