2016 Presidential Rallies

First published 5 November 2024

I was a Republican in 2016 and Dr. Ben Carson was my favorite pick for the Republican nomination. I was taking AP US Government & Politics that year and I’d read Dr. Carson’s book Gifted Hands. The book is a really touching story about his childhood in poverty and his tenacious pursuit of education leading to a career as a respected neurosurgeon. His rally was a bright and hot affair at the Arkansas State Capitol and he spoke like a preacher from a pulpit at his place at the base of the steps while a couple dozen of us sweated on the grounds. I thought he spoke convincingly and his ideas seemed logical but my mom pointed out that his idea of a 10% tax on everything would make life more expensive.  

Ted Cruz played to a wealthier crowd. His rally was a much smaller event in a venue in downtown Little Rock. As an event, the most interesting thing was walking through downtown Little Rock at night, an activity not suited for the faint of heart. I don’t remember any music and I vaguely remember the lights being dim. He spoke on a small stage and I don’t remember much of what he said, just the impression that he was like any other greasy politician. He sticks in my mind now for his terrible covid response and for fleeing Texas during a devastating snowstorm which downed the power grid.  

For Trump’s rally, though, the atmosphere in Barton Coliseum felt electrifying. People near the stadium sat outside their houses selling parking and there were protestors lined down the block. “Free Hugs” read one woman’s sign and my mother rolled up her window in disgust. We had to pass through security guards and metal detectors to enter the Coliseum with its steep bleachers. Trump was delayed for a long time, maybe an hour or two, and there was a lull in entertainment as the same playlist looped on repeat. He was pretty controversial so I doubted that Adele knew that “Rolling in the Deep” played at his rallies and that struck me as strange, even then. Some left but the truly devoted stayed and when he finally arrived onstage, the atmosphere ramped back up again as he loudly proclaimed that the stadium was at max capacity. 13,000 people were here (a claim he repeated on Facebook after the event) and the fire marshalls had told him they couldn’t let anyone else in. This crowd was bigger even than ZZ Top, he said! We felt proud to be a part of something so big and we cheered loudly. When a protestor flipped him the bird in the middle of the arena, we chanted “Get him out!” as he was dragged away. My dad got a pretty cool photo of the protestor in action and he was proud to show it later. Trump spoke a lot about how he wasn’t running to make money, that he was a billionaire and didn’t need it. He was doing this for us, to “Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!” I signed up to his emailing list when I registered for the event and his campaign emails were increasingly demanding for money and increasingly vitriolic. I unsubscribed after a while but I still felt relief and hope when he was elected. Thinking back now, it’s hard to put my finger on what I thought Trump would be fixing and how exactly he planned to fix it and whether those plans would actually improve the country. It was more that he espoused a set of ideas which, at the time, I believed in. I could write another entire essay on how that belief system shifted and why, but suffice it to say that it was a long process. 

I stumbled onto this when fact-checking my memories, but the maximum capacity of Barton Coliseum is 7,150 people. 

Link to photos from the event:  https://www.arkansasonline.com/photos/galleries/2016/feb/23/gallery-04-02-2016-07-47-40/

I see the rally for what it was now: a spectacle and entertainment. It was nothing like the other political rallies for a reason. Trump was building a community, a place for people to express their rage at the system and experience a powerful sense of belonging. The divide among Americans has been growing for a long time but until Trump, the right didn’t have a unifying voice against a perceived unchecked progressivism. Trump saw an opportunity and, aided by foreign powers, he took it. Whatever Trump’s original motivation to run for office, he capitalized on his fame (infamy?) and launched Trump Media in 2021, which now makes up the majority of his wealth and whose value fluctuates based on his public performance. 

Flash forward eight years and the damage is significant, the political scene almost unrecognizable. Trump has incited a violent riot to overthrow election results, spread distrust in our fundamental institutions and widened the ideological gap between countrymen. Despite the attempted coup and his felony charges, he’s somehow still running in this election cycle and he says that he will use the military against his critics and that an opposing politician should be shot by firing squad, among other outrageous things. The dystopian Project 2025 would increase presidential power to do these things but surely not by much. People wouldn’t let it happen, right? We cannot let our democracy, our great Noble Experiment, slip from our fragile hands. I’ve stayed away from America because of the hatred and anger and ill feeling that everyone seems to have. A friend who bounces back and forth between America and Eastern Europe tells me that it’s now “so much worse it’s not even comparable” back home. How we can come back from this, I’m not sure. The conspiracy theories and hatred and anger won’t just go away. People won’t magically start to see the other side as human. 

Personally, I am so disappointed in the way America has betrayed itself. People whose great grandparents would’ve starved to death without FDR’s “socialism” now rant on Facebook about “handouts”. People whose great great grandparents died in labor riots now defend the rich fucks when workers die at their warehouses in natural disasters, all for poverty wages. All the money we pay in taxes goes to military toys in foreign countries and not back to ourselves in the forms of healthcare, education, infrastructure and we are letting it happen. 

Watching my country cannibalize itself from afar is hard. I love that place more than I’ll ever be able to express. It’s where I’m from and a part of who I am. My ancestors fought to make it a country and they fought to defend it. What can one do when times are uncertain and discontent abounds? There is no grand or sweeping action to take, simply the everyday business of loving your neighbor and embracing small joys which will inevitably build to a larger network of connection and community. That is how we remain one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.