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I was going not as a supporter, but as a photographer. More than that, I was going as someone curious about Americans who are voting for Trump in this increasingly insane election. I wanted to make sense of it by documenting it through pictures, an approach I often take when I want to gain a better understanding of something.
“Make sure you’ve got an escape route planned if necessary,” a concerned family member warned.
On the 2-hour drive to Portsmouth I thought about stories I’d read of Trump inciting hostility toward the press. Just a day before, at a rally in Cincinnati, the entire traveling press corps had to be evacuated from the event by police in riot gear after he urged the crowd to anger. I was anticipating vitriol to be hurled my way.
I parked outside the venue and was ushered over to a private security guard in fatigues who asked me to turn on my camera. I realized I was shaking. Chants of “Lock her up” were emanating from the crowd. “OK,” he said. “Stick your arms out wide.” He ran his metal detector up and down before giving me the go ahead. I headed inside, where I would be restricted to a barricaded section far from the stage. I overheard a cameraman taking bets as to whether or not Trump would swear during his speech (he didn’t).
The rally was being held in a side lot at Toyota of Portsmouth, in an area devoid of automobiles. A growing crowd of several hundred, maybe 1,000 (or 7,000, according to Trump himself), many of whom were wearing red caps with the “Make America Great Again” slogan emblazoned on the crown, stood and listened politely as an opening act spoke at the podium. He suggested we all come back another day to buy a car.
It felt like I was at a sporting event, albeit one where you’re rooting for the visiting team while sitting in the home team’s bleachers. People were loose and laughing, some were even dancing to the Backstreet Boys’ I Want it That Way. The air was crisp and the smell of cigarette smoke hung over the crowd.
I was expecting to see swastikas. Skinheads. Any sign of the openly racist, misogynist behavior Trump’s crowds have a reputation for engaging in. Mostly what I saw were ordinary people, families. It was a pretty homogeneous group, but the lack of racial diversity was in keeping with this part of New England and didn’t seem unique to a Trump rally.
I saw a little girl in a “Make America Great Again” cap sitting with her mother behind the press bleachers. A little boy on his father’s shoulders, the boy with a Trump button, the father in a shirt celebrating his zeal for the second amendment. The boy looked bored. A very elderly woman was pushed through the crowd in a wheelchair, practically old enough to have witnessed first-hand the women’s suffrage movement. I didn’t hear one person suggest it was a good idea to #repealthe19th, though that had been trending on Twitter earlier in the week.
Later, as I walked around taking pictures, I caught the gist of Rudolph Giuliani’s familiar speech: “Clinton’s deleted emails, corruption, voter fraud.” The crowd seemed to like what they were hearing, booing at the right times and howling with approval at others. More chants of “Lock her up.”
One man came over to the press stand to suggest to a Fox News reporter a story he thought was not getting enough coverage in the media: “There’s stories about how well Trump is doing with women voters,” he said. There was a long pause. “How come there’s no stories about how well he’s doing with male voters?” He raised his eyebrows as if to say, you’re welcome for this idea.
By now the Backstreet Boys and the Rolling Stones songs had faded out and people were starting to get antsy. It was a little after noon, when Trump had been slated to arrive. Finally, the crowd could sense it was time and they raised their Trump/Pence signs high into the air and began screaming. I saw a grown man jump up and down in as if he were on a trampoline.
And then the candidate appeared at the podium. Tiny from my vantage point way at the back of the press enclosure, but obviously large in the hearts of those cheering for him. He threw a hat out into the audience, a souvenir.
He spoke for less than an hour, hitting the same talking points that Giuliani had hit. He added the promise that big screen televisions would be made in America and not China in the near future. He spoke off the cuff, but I thought without tremendous bluster or even enthusiasm. The one remark that drew any notice from the members of the press was his suggestion that Hillary Clinton should undergo a drug test before the next debate, and he would take one too. He used that suggestion to segue into the opioid crisis affecting New Hampshire.
I came for fiery demagoguery, but I saw fatigue not only in Trump, but in the audience. The people nodding with their eyes closed and heads turned down. Maybe it was an off day for Trump, maybe he needed a snack, or maybe the campaigning, the blustering, the attacks and counter-attacks, were finally beginning to take their toll. He finished his speech. The crowd cheered, with less relish than at his arrival, and people started making their way to the exits.
That’s not to say there weren’t any signs of anger at the rally. As the crowd began to thin, a woman approached the television cameras and pulled up her “Hillary for Prison 2016” shirt to reveal a self-made shirt with the words “Bill Clinton is a Rapist” scribbled in black marker. She stood mashed against the silver press barricade shouting at the cameras while a little girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, looked on. I wondered what the little girl was thinking.
As I headed back to my car I followed behind a woman with a tiny American flag stuck in a messy bun atop her head. She was walking beside a man who was holding the hand of a little boy in a red baseball cap. I felt a sense of commonality with them on a purely human level, and with many of the people in the audience that day. We all want better lives, a better future, a safer, more prosperous country. We’re all angry. We’re all tired.
Tara Wray is a documentary filmmaker and photographer who lives in Barnard.