It doesn’t matter if you want to call it a hate rally, a Nazi rally, or an authoritarian Lollapalooza. It doesn’t matter whether you want to call the speaker uncongenial, ill-mannered, or a fascist. I don’t care what you call the pro-Trump spectacle that unfolded at Madison Square Garden this weekend.
The rally, which fortunately took place in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, was just the darkest stain in a decade of political career rooted in scapegoating and fear-mongering. After a decade of inciting fear and hatred, we are now at the peak of MAGA.
A talk that started with a rant about Spanish-speaking immigrants in Trump Tower’s tacky atrium ended with a lame joke about Spanish-speaking Americans made by a slightly vulgar cartoon, and another speaker called Donald Trump’s political opponents ” He was called “Antichrist.” It’s been 10 years since the Trump era began, a decade of racial scandals, sex scandals, economic scandals, and crime scandals.
It is no exaggeration to say that we are numb to it all. Last week, another woman accused President Trump of sexual abuse (in a cameo by Jeffrey Epstein), but this week there was little coverage. She is the 27th woman to accuse President Trump of sexual assault. No one cared. We expect scandals from President Trump. What’s worse, too many Americans crave them.
when he or his agents attacked Puerto Ricans, Muslims, Black people, legal Haitian immigrants, or people from “the worst countries.” When President Trump had dinner with Holocaust deniers. When he doesn’t deny supporting David Duke, or elevating Batman or the anti-Semitic QAnon movement. When he attacked transgender people. He spent day after day spreading lie after lie, chipping away at what passed for American civility layer by layer until we were left here, with people raw and shaken. They view their fellow Americans with suspicion and fear.
he did this.
Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, New York, USA, October 27, 2024. Brendan McDiarmid/Brendan McDiarmid/Reuters
In 2015, Trump’s first candidacy was dismissed as a reality TV star’s vanity project. That was not a wrong assessment, but it misjudged the American appetite for falsehood and vulgarity. It’s not that Trump was a reality star who replaced Real America with Real America, it’s that Real America turned out to be more of a reality show than we gave it credit for. Cruelty, interpersonal conflicts and unstable personalities, which fuel an addiction to terrible television, are now central to the entire half of the electorate.
This week’s Madison Square rally was not an anomaly, just a very special episode of the Trump show.
10 years have passed since then. If 10 years ago, as Mr. Trump was contemplating his candidacy, someone had sat down and satirized what a successful Trump campaign would look like, it would have closely matched the coverage of actual events. It would have been similar. Consider the following passage from an actual New York Times report: “David Rehm, a childhood friend of Mr. Trump, called Ms. Harris ‘the devil.'” Businessman Grant Cardone asserted that the current vice president has a “pimp.” Sid Rosenberg called Hillary Clinton a “sick asshole” for linking a Trump rally to a pro-Nazi event decades ago.
It’s the fact that Hulk Hogan, the only black speaker who came out to a Dixie song, tried and failed to rip his shirt off at one point, or Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Therefore, there is no mention of the fact that the rally has even started. .
Sorry, but doesn’t that sound like a bad episode of Veep? (Actually, it sounds like a great episode of Veep, but that’s only because Veep makes fun of stupid things!)
I don’t know how many felony convictions the speakers in attendance had, but it was a lot. why? Because sometimes the scammers win. Sometimes the worst among us can make the rest of the underdogs and losers believe that they are better off running the show. When people compare Trumpism to Nazism, it’s not because we all think President Trump is a “literal Hitler,” as his supporters like to say.
That’s because Trumpism displays the same hatred and clowning as early Nazis, with hyperbolic, self-aggrandizing speeches and a cadre of big, stupid thugs shaking their fists in the streets. Because we recognize the same ugly impulses that initially forced the German minority to sacrifice their character and morals. It shows the fear that caused good Germans to remain silent and the ruthless calculations that led Germany’s powerful businessmen to turn a blind eye to, and ultimately cooperate with, Nazi abuses. This is because they are aware of it.
Because we know that dehumanizing words about humans ultimately lead to the dehumanization of humanity by the state. Could it not happen here? Can I mention Trump’s plan to round up millions of people from their homes and put them in concentration camps? Can I mention the fact that recent polls show that half of all Americans, including a quarter of Democrats, support such mass deportations? What exactly is it like when you visit?We’ll explain what it’s like. It’s like Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Donald (left) and Melania Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 27, 2024. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
When I sat down to write this column, I wanted to keep it light. But did you know? This is scary. It’s scary because we’re only a week away from voting in this election, but I don’t think there are any Americans who believe that this election will end quietly.
The number of returnable ballot boxes has already exploded. Polling workers are being attacked. After one voter was told he couldn’t enter a polling place wearing MAGA gear, he tore his shirt, pushed a poll worker away, and told the worker to “suck it.” J.D. Vance later tweeted about the woman, “What a patriot.”
That’s where we are. That’s who we’ve become over the last 10 years. That’s right, I don’t care what you call Trump rallies or Trump movements. The name is not as important as the corruption of the humans who feed it. We’ve wondered for decades just how divisive American politics can be.
I understand now. I hope next week’s elections will pull us back from the brink. But what if that’s not the case? What if Trump wins? What happens if you lose? What feels like the last straw is often just the straw. How many more straws will he draw before he breaks America’s back?
