2023-11-21 08:15:00
Jeannie arrived at dawn. This young blonde woman waited in line under the blazing sun for hours to be one of the first admitted to the stadium near Miami where an electoral rally for her favorite candidate was being held in the evening. “I love Donald Trump,” she declares passionately. “He defends America, he defends us. After God, there is only him to save the country.”
Around her, while waiting for their idol, thousands of supporters, the majority of whom are Latinos, stroll on the artificial turf of the football field in a joyful atmosphere. No politician attracts such crowds or arouses such adulation. As if we were in a religious gathering rather than a political meeting. Many wear t-shirts and caps with slogans glorifying the ex-president, wave fans bearing his image, others are draped in huge banners decorated with “Trump 2024”. The big attraction is posing between two cardboard replicas of Donald and Melania. There is also a long line to buy Our Journey Together, a photo book about his years at the White House, and have it signed by Don Junior, his eldest son.
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Oddly enough, almost three years after he left the White House, nothing has really changed. In the stands we find the same slogans on the t-shirts: “Jesus is my savior, Donald Trump is my president”, “Donald Trump was right all along”, “Fuck Biden”. Despite 91 charges, two impeachments, a first term that ended with an attempted manipulation of the elections and an insurrection at the Capitol, Jeannie and her supporters still worship the former president. For them, already up in arms against the system they consider rotten, the elites and the political parties, it is impossible that he is wrong. Strangely, to defend it, they all use the same arguments, down to the word. “The indictments are bullshit, a witch hunt. Trump is honest, he tells the truth. He is persecuted by a criminal regime because he is not part of the establishment,” protests LaChelle, a fifty-year-old petulant, specialist in alternative medicine. The January 6 insurrection that he encouraged? “It was instigated by the CIA. The protesters were actors.” For Robert, a taxi driver from South Florida, “the trials have only one goal: to torpedo him. I’m surprised they haven’t murdered him yet.”
The audience drinks in his words
His multiple legal troubles seem to further increase their fervor. When Donald Trump finally, more than an hour late, climbed onto the enormous podium, the crowd greeted him like the Messiah, standing, chanting “USA, USA” and stamping their feet frantically on the metal stands. , while immortalizing the scene on the phones.
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And yet, for nearly ninety minutes, he rehashes the same lies, the same grievances, the same apocalyptic vision of America. Massive electoral fraud cost him the elections in 2020, the country is in decline, invaded by migrants, drugs, crime, threatened by China and led by a corrupt Biden… “We have never been so close to the third world war”, he prophesies. The audience drinks in his words. Age – he is 77 – has not softened his rhetoric. He violently attacks Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and his rival in the primaries, the migrants whom he describes as a collection of madmen released from psychiatric asylums and habitual criminals. He makes fun of “Rich Joe” and imitates him by miming a sort of broken-down puppet. “He would be incapable of climbing the stairs of this podium,” he assures among laughter. But is it late or because he is preaching to the convinced? Halfway through the speech, the stands begin to empty.
If he chose to perform in Miami that evening, it was to compete with the televised debate which brought together his Republican rivals, in the same city, at the same time, a few kilometers away. The campaign rally is being held in Hialeah, a booming Latino suburb populated by Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. All fled left-wing dictatorships. Trump’s popularity in the Hispanic community, until now rather Democratic, continues to grow. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 36% of Latinos are ready to vote for him compared to 38% for Joe Biden, a worrying trend for the latter. It must be said that the favorite in the Republican primaries knows how to talk to them. He thunders against “the leftists-Marxists-socialists-communists” who “are transforming the United States into Cuba”. He accuses the administration of trying to imprison its opponents in the style of the Cuban regime. “We want Trump, we want Trump,” the crowd chants.
His supporters see his first term as a sort of lost paradise where everything was fine, even if the reality is a little different. “There was no war, no inflation, fuel prices were low,” LaChelle continues, and he stood for “America First.” “I don’t see why we’re sending millions to Ukraine or Israel. We need this money here”: for Alberto, a Venezuelan who arrived, he says, legally, “he brought a lot of necessary changes, he managed the country very well, immigration was under control at the border whereas now we have millions of undocumented immigrants and terrorists.” Eric Matheny, a lawyer who wears a T-shirt with the slogan “I am anti-abortion, pro-God, pro-arms and pro-Trump,” acknowledges that he does not always agree with the ex-president. “But I prefer his vengeful tweets and cheap gasoline to a hollow and senile Biden. And the world was safer when he was in power. America was strong and respected. If he comes back, Hamas and Russia will go backwards.”
“America will regain its greatness”
Donald Trump, well aware of the unpopularity of wars, added a section to his speech. Hamas and Vladimir Putin would not have dared to act when he was in the White House, but they are taking advantage of the fact that Biden is “weak”, he insists. “For four years I maintained the security of America, of Israel, of Ukraine.” Once re-elected, he proclaims, “we will have peace all over the world” and “America will regain its greatness”. He also plans to revoke the visas of students sympathizing with Hamas, once again impose a ban on nationals of certain Muslim countries, and promises “the biggest deportation operation in the history of America”, to the cheers of audience.
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All his supporters have no doubt: he will win in November 2024, against Joe Biden. After all, the right-wing media they watch portrays him as a doddering old man all day long. “Of course he will win since he has never lost an election,” says Rubin Young, a black man wrapped in a large flag bearing the image of the candidate. In the meantime, the mayor of Hialeah came to make an announcement from the podium, alongside the ex-president: an avenue will be renamed. In the name of Trump.
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