HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — It’s just past 11:00 a.m., and former President Donald Trump is nearly seven hours from taking the stage at the Farm Show Complex here in Dauphin County, and yet the traffic to get into the massive Farm Show campus stretches for miles along U.S. 22.
Nine-year-old Colton Ream is walking with his parents, intermittently holding their hands and getting caught up in straining to go to the vendor booth ahead, which is filled with colorful patriotic merchandise, as they walk toward the line that wraps around the complex. The Ream family said they left their Annville home early in the morning to take their son to his first Trump rally.
Once the doors open inside the New Holland Arena, named after the farm equipment company here in Pennsylvania, the 10,000 seats in the stands and on the arena floor fill up quickly. Cindy Foust and her husband, Denny, are two of the first to settle in just above the press riser.
Cindy is a retired banker, and Denny is a retired CPA and current president of the 9,000-member international Studebaker Drivers Club . They both say they are here to hear the former president lay out for them what he will do to help improve their lives and communities.
“It’s not talked about with enough seriousness how much inflation has impacted families’ budgets,” Cindy said as Denny nodded in agreement. “That is what I like about Trump. He talks to us about us, and I want to hear how he will make our lives better.”
Chris Herr said the decision to hold the rally at the New Holland Arena holds significance to every person involved in the agriculture industry, which is the state’s leading employer, because of what happens here every year.
“The New Holland Arena is sacred agriculture soil in this state,” said Herr, who is the executive vice president of PennAg, the state’s largest agriculture trade organization. “The dirt floor of this arena is where the horse pull competitions are held, the high school rodeo, the second-largest high school rodeo event in the country. It is also where the cattle competition is held for the 4-H. Just about everything from square dancing to tractor square dancing happens here.”
Herr said that when you think back about how many great things have happened at this arena, it shows that Trump gets the significance of place when choosing to do a rally: “That is why he picked Butler [where Trump was shot]. That is why he picked here.”
By 5:40 p.m., Trump arrives at the arena, heading first to a holding area behind the stage draped off in blue curtain on all sides. Outside the blue curtain are dignitaries Pennsylvania Republican Reps. Mike Kelly, Scott Perry, Lloyd Smucker, John Joyce, and Dan Meuser, as well as Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick.
It is the people after them — local people who came with their families, local law enforcement, first responders, and veterans from Vietnam through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — where you see Trump in a way few do. There are hugs and lingering conversations about their families, what towns they are from, and what their lives are like.
It all takes a little too long for the planners of the event, but it is interesting being a fly on the wall, watching the conversations play out between Trump and these Pennsylvanians whose accomplishments rarely rise to the forefront of any conversation outside of the family.
Trump moves into another curtained-off room to sit on a gray couch for an interview. We are directly behind the stage, and the chorus of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” is echoing throughout the arena just feet away. It has been 17 days since we last saw each other, 16 days since we spoke, all related to the assassination attempt that happened to him several counties west of here in Butler.
“I feel good,” Trump says.
Feet from him, you can hear the crowd roar as the anticipation rises. I ask him that if he wins in November, what will he tell the people four years from now that he delivered for them in his second term?
“I think more than anything else, hope. Because the people of this country have no hope,” he says, peeling off a list of problems that have negatively affected people’s lives that he says come directly from Biden-Harris policies.
“Inflation, the border, crime, the ability to buy a home,” he says, adding, “They [people] don’t have the American dream anymore. I’m going to be talking about it in my speech tonight, about how we achieve that.”
He says he wants restoring the American dream to be his legacy to the public.
Outside the event, the national media are talking about Trump’s interview in Chicago at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. The consensus among the national media is that he bombed it, but Trump says he sees it differently.
“I showed up,” he says, pointing out that despite the strained back-and-forth, it was something his Democratic presumptive opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, did not do. So, why does he show up in places people don’t expect him to? He goes to the Bronx, New Jersey, Temple University in Philadelphia, and Detroit — places no Republican candidate, even him, has earned even token support in decades.
Trump explains it is no different from his decision in 2016 to show up in places like Ashtabula, Ohio; Luzerne, Pennsylvania; and Kent County, Michigan, places Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns rarely visited over the years, let alone held rallies. He says that because the middle class is the beating heart of the country, this election is about restoring prosperity and hope to middle-class America in every corner of the nation.
“These are incredible people,” he says of the firemen, laborers, construction workers, and small businessmen and women who make up the middle class. “These are the ones that built our country.”
“People like Corey Comperatore, they work their asses off, and they built this country,” he says of the former fire chief who was shot during the assassination attempt.
Meanwhile, the Trump playlist is getting close to his entrance theme. He is seeking to energize supporters again. Two weeks ago, Trump was ahead in the polls over Biden. One week ago, Harris became the party’s nominee and closed the polling gap. And within days, it is expected that Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) will likely be named her vice presidential nominee.
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Harris has had a polling boost. Shapiro may bring an even bigger one. It is unclear if the Democrats can sustain it. It is clear Trump has no plans to let them sustain. So, despite his preference for showmanship, Trump admits the race will come down to who can connect best with voters and talk about them to them.
“We’re going to say what we’re going to do because we’re going to bring back the country. Harris can’t bring back the country,” Trump says as he makes his way toward the stage.
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