The 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.
Photo
The man holding the “K.K.K. 4 Trump” sign during a rally for Mr. Trump in New Orleans last week was soon hustled out.Credit
Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times
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.
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.
Photo
A protester being removed from the stage after a campaign rally for Mr. Trump was cancelled in Chicago on Friday.Credit
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
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.”
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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.
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