The first time I saw Donald Trump in person was at the Cleveland debate in 2015 when he mocked Rosie O’Donnell as a “fat pig,” “dog,” “slob,” and a “disgusting animal” following a question from Megyn Kelly. I then stood at the Capitol and watched him take the presidential oath 18 months later.
Trump is obviously one of the most unique figures to ever lead the country, and I had only seen Trump one other time — when he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). But I had never attended one of his signature rallies, characterized by NBC as “a key fixture of America’s political landscape for nearly a decade,” with more than 900 such events since the notorious golden escalator ride at Trump Tower. While browsing his events page Sunday night, I saw he was going to speak at a Pittsburgh stadium three hours from my home in Columbus, Ohio. Trump said in September he will not run again if he loses, so the rally was my last chance to hear him as a candidate.
I went to Pennsylvania less as a reporter and more as a spectator. With just hours to go until polls close, no one needs another column on how Trump says “X” about “Y” at another swing-state event, and I didn’t even bother with a press pass. Mystifying politicians is obnoxious and lame, but there’s an element of historical significance to Trump’s rallies worth acknowledging. After all, his crowd sizes were arguably one of the major blind spots the media missed when they failed to predict a Trump win in 2016, even if they did shrink over a period of nearly a decade. In fact, there’s good reason to believe the former president’s rallies will be remembered as politically iconic, as the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1850s now are.
While politicians have traditionally leveraged rallies to lecture Americans about why they know better about the economy or foreign policy, Trump used them to rip on opponents in unscripted rants and often sounded like a comedian when doing so. The act is not just entertaining but captivating, which is a) probably why supporters gravitate toward them, and b) why major television networks would simply broadcast the performances live when Trump first started doing them.
The crowds themselves reflect the resilience of a political movement that is united against the constant barrage of so-called elitists who smear them as racist, sexist, homophobic, and whatever other labels Democrats are eager to stick to the “garbage” Trump supporters. Trump’s rally in Pittsburgh on Monday night was no exception. The former president spoke for roughly 90 minutes, veering in and out of his typical talking points to mock Michelle Obama, celebrate the endorsement from Joe Rogan (which Rogan posted during the rally), and feature Megyn Kelly on stage.
“That’s so nice,” Trump said on stage immediately following Rogan’s announcement on X.
Kelly’s speech, meanwhile, delivered on the eve of Trump’s third election as a presidential candidate, marks the conclusive end to the feud that followed his apparent suggestion that she was menstruating at the 2015 Cleveland debate when she asked about the Manhattan developer’s prior comments about women.
“Can you believe this guy?” she said, referencing not his outlandish statements made so controversial a decade ago but his “energy” and “stamina.”
“I’m ready to go to sleep over there, and he’s got another rally to go to,” Kelly said.
I read four political memoirs of various figures in and out of Trump’s orbit over the past month, including Swing Hard In Case You Hit It, by campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh; Enough, by Cassidy Hutchinson; Melania and Me, by former Melania Trump confidante Stephanie Winston Wolkoff; and Melania, by the former first lady herself. A common thread through all of them was how important Trump’s rallies are because of how they energize the former president. That much was clearly on display Monday as Trump showed no signs of exhaustion during his third stop on a final swing state tour. And frankly, there are also few things like the energy of a presidential rally on the eve of an election.
