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Reporter’s Notebook
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Covering Donald Trump, and Witnessing the Danger Up Close
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Politics | Reporter’s Notebook
Covering Donald Trump, and Witnessing the Danger Up Close
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Continue reading the main story Share This PageThe first time I felt unsafe at a Trump event was a week ago in New Orleans.I hadn’t been on the Trump beat long, but the warm Friday night rally in an airport hangar on the outskirts of the city thrummed with an ominous energy. Donald J. Trump took the stage just as the sky was slipping from purplish twilight to slate black, and the mood shifted as well, turning tense and electric.The first interruption came early, followed by another, and another, as a constant stream of protesters disrupted the event. Some went peacefully and quietly as they were escorted out by security officers, but others did not, shouting obscenities and dropping to the ground to resist.The crowd turned angry, jostling and pushing and jeering the disrupters. One young woman, a Trump supporter, was shoved against the metal barricades and began to cry. A group of older women left early, shortly after a man holding a “KKK 4 Trump” sign was hustled out nearby.For Mr. Trump, the rally was simply “one hell of a way to spend a Friday evening,’’ as he crowed from the stage.But it was also a harbinger of future violence, and a glimpse of how Mr. Trump, who has promised to bring the country together, seems to have united Americans only in stirring their passion and anger.What we are witnessing now is complicated, with few obvious heroes. At times, both sides have behaved badly.Trump supporters are quick to turn on protesters, especially those who don’t look like them. They point and holler. Sometimes they spit and kick and shove. A young black woman in Kentucky was pushed and called names, her sign ripped from her hands. A black man in North Carolina was sucker-punched by a 78-year-old white man, who later looked into a camera and warned that next time, “We might have to kill him.”To witness the crowd turn on the protesters in its midst is to watch a feverish body, bucking and writhing as it tries to eject an invading virus.I have talked to protesters who still don’t quite have the words to describe what they felt when they were singled out and turned upon, often by their hometown communities. Mr. Trump says he condemns violence. But he also shouts at his crowds to “Get ’em out!” And even when he urges them not to hurt the protesters, a hard edge of menace bullets his words.Yet the protesters, too, have sometimes instigated the clashes. They fling themselves to the ground, forcing local law enforcement officers — often outmanned and overwhelmed — to drag them away. They also shout and curse, making obscene gestures as they are led from events. And Friday night in Chicago, in perhaps the best-organized effort so far, they came not to simply stand quietly but to utterly halt Mr. Trump’s ability to deliver his speech.Both sides say they feel deeply wronged and disenfranchised, albeit in different ways.The Trump supporters I interview are almost unfailingly courteous. In the snaking lines of traffic that precede his events, they smile and wave and allow me to cut in front of them. And they politely answer my questions, explaining how their vision for the country — a place where if you worked hard and followed the rules, you could provide for your family and have a decent life — is being snatched from them.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story
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Already, they feel like their key rights — the ability to earn a fair wage, the right to own a gun — are slipping away. And now, they are watching as the Republican Party is trying to withhold the nomination from Mr. Trump, and as protesters are interrupting his events.They are angry.The 71-year-old woman I talked to before the New Orleans rally — who told me “Nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren” would dissuade her from voting for him — said she had been “forcibly retired,” part of a recent round of layoffs. To me, her comments reflected not just her genuine passion for Mr. Trump, but the depth of her despair.The protesters also feel similarly wronged. Many of them are minorities — blacks, Hispanics, Muslims — who hear his pronouncements and are insulted, or even frightened. They, too, have a vision for this country and the American dream, believing that if they worked hard and followed the rules, they could melt into this nation that has welcomed so many.They say they cannot stand by and do nothing as Mr. Trump calls Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals,” or threatens to bar all Muslims from entering the country.Griselda Cardena Segovia, 20, a college sophomore, was part of a small group of young people who were removed from a Trump event on Monday in Concord, N.C., before it began, after they linked arms in silent protest.She said that she and her younger sister had come to peacefully observe the rally and support their parents, immigrants from Mexico whom they feel Mr. Trump is disparaging. But as soon as they entered, the crowd “looked at us wrong and you could feel the energy, that we weren’t wanted,” she said, adding that they found the scene — which included some of their high school teachers — to be jarring.“We have never in our whole life, living here in Concord, we have never experienced racism until now,” Ms. Segovia said. “I never thought my town, that we contributed to, would treat us like this.”After the rally, Ms. Segovia’s group stood on the grassy curb, holding signs. It was unseasonably warm for March — the sort of day where you might sneak out of work for a long lunch outside — and as cars exited, dozens rolled down their windows, to shout obscenities and slurs at the young men and women. “Go back to Mexico,” someone hollered from one S.U.V., as it peeled away.The group, clad in solid black and white T-shirts, replied with “God bless you,” but some of them, too, got caught up in the moment, chasing the cars and hurling their own invectives back.The unnerving energy began infusing Mr. Trump’s rallies in recent weeks, just as I came on the beat after several months covering Jeb Bush, where what constituted drama at a night rally was him politely imploring his crowd to “please clap.”As a reporter, I always try to anticipate where the story is headed, so I get there first, or at least right alongside the news. And I quickly began jotting down scenes of violence and near-violence, and gathering voices of angry, frustrated Trump supporters. Sometime soon, I warned my editors, someone is going to be seriously injured — or worse — at a Trump rally, and we’ll want to have a story ready.The images broadcast to the world Friday evening from Chicago — of people shouting and swinging at each other, of others lying bloodied in the streets — felt like a nation many of us didn’t recognize, or didn’t want to recognize.The sights and sounds felt foreign and far away to me, too. But they were also right there, all in my notebook, gathering and growing and waiting to explode.Because, in many ways, what happened Friday night in Chicago felt less surprising than it should have, and more utterly inevitable.Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.
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