Orange is no longer the new black
Our man in Florida finds the Trump faithful are ordinary folks, loyal to their guy. The Donald’s popularity is fading fast as scandals mount
Past the amusement rides and the movie theatre, they come – for the Big Show. Past the Walmart and the Target store. Past the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, and the Starbucks cafe.
They come in their droves to Aaron Bessant Park; which can only be accessed by walking through the Pier Park open-air mall. From all around Panama City Beach and the whole Florida panhandle.
They walk through the packed car park, and take their place in the queue. They will wait for hours, just to get in. They don’t mind. They laugh and talk politics.
They are normal people. Retirees, military veterans, solo mums and real estate agents. All ages and – surprisingly – an even gender mix.
They have been labelled ‘‘Deplorables’’ but they embrace the term. ‘‘Proud Deplorable 2016’’, some T-shirts read. ‘‘Adorable Deplorables’’ read a few more. Other T-shirts state: ‘‘Hillary sucks, but not like Monica.’’
Past two big buses, both with the candidate’s face on them, they follow the snaking queue towards a long white tent where they pass through metal detectors.
It has been a long wait, but more than 8000 have made it in to watch the show from a big stage flanked by massive video screens. More than 10,000 haven’t, but are waiting outside the park to hear their man tell them their version of the truth.
They have come for Donald J Trump.
Less than a month out from the US presidential election, Republican candidate Trump arrived in the key swing state of Florida this Tuesday evening with his campaign reeling.
Perhaps more directly: the New York property tycoon turned reality TV star is in the midst of what Time magazine has labelled a ‘‘total meltdown’’.
Four days ago, the infamous Access Hollywood tape – which featured Trump boasting about sexual assault – was released, sparking widespread scorn. Fresh allegations that Trump had forced himself on women were on the way too, and will be published in the New York Times and People magazine later this week.
Polls are down across the board for Trump, with battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida itself starting to regularly lean towards Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Clinton, attempting to become the first woman to become the US President, has handily beaten Trump in both debates, according to most pundits.
Since the release of the tape last weekend, a new swath of highprofile Republicans turned off by his previous transgressions has been jumping off the Trump Train. Down-ballot races for the Republicans are starting to look shaky with a chasm-like rift developing in the Grand Old Party.
Yet as his party abandoned him, and as his chances of winning the White House on November 8 seemed to be plummeting, Trump stood firm.
‘‘The shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for
In the latest episode of America’s latest reality TV hit, The 2016 Presidential Election, more than half a dozen women have come forward this week to accuse Donald Trump of groping them, forcibly kissing them, or walking in on halfnaked contestants in beauty pageant dressing rooms. The accusers include a reporter from People magazine. She describes a mid-interview assault while Trump’s pregnant wife Melania America the way I want to,’’ the 70-year-old tweeted the morning before his arrival in Florida.
Later in the week, in North Carolina, Trump would double down further, openly mocking the appearance of one harassment accuser – ‘‘believe me, she would not be my first choice’’ – while continuing with his conspiracy of a rigged election.
But this is all ahead of Trump as I watch him take the stage in Panama City Beach.
Despite the fact the most recent polls show Clinton ahead by 3.5 per cent in Florida, Panama City Beach’s Bay County is GOP heartland. In 2012, Mitt Romney won the county with a whopping 71 per cent of the vote. The last Democrat to carry it was Jimmy Carter back in 1976.
Bay County does have historical leanings to anti-establishment figures like Trump, however. In 1968, the county – which, according to the 2015 US Census, is 82.2 per cent white – backed George Wallace, an Alabama was upstairs at the Trumps’ grand Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
These floodgates opened just days after an unaired portion of tape from NBC’s Access Hollywood was released by the Washington Post .As has been broadly reported, Trump is caught on a hot mic with Billy Bush, an entertainment journalist (and first cousin to former President George W. Bush). The two men share banter. Trump discusses his attempts to sleep with a married woman. Of ‘‘coming up on her like a bitch.’’ He boasts of grabbing women’s genitalia. He says, ‘‘when you’re a star . . . you can do anything’’.
Wounded by this embarrassing revelation, Trump attacked Hillary Clinton with a cynical stunt that none of her prior political opponents had stooped to. Ever.
Just hours before the second presidential debate, Trump called a press conference. He sat there, sandwiched between three Bill Clinton accusers and a rape victim whose assailant was represented by Hillary Rodham as a young lawyer. Trump intended to then host the four women in his family box during the debate, alongside his wife and adult children. The women were to file out on stage and confront Bill Clinton when the ‘‘families’’ shook hands before taking their seats. Trump planned to humiliate Bill Clinton, and to rattle his wife. This was foiled at the last minute by debate organisers who threatened to throw the Clinton accusers out. At that debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper – one of two debate moderators, and who may go down in history as the journalist who asked the last question of a viable (if long-shot and widely disliked) presidential candidate – said in reference to the Access Hollywood tape , ‘‘Have you ever done those Trump, the man who ‘cherishes women’, but has spent decades debasing them, has been hiding in plain sight for the entire election season. things?’’ Trump replied, ‘‘No, I have not’’. And that was it. Predictions are a dangerous game in politics. But absent a miracle, it’s over.
It’s over because Trump can’t win the White House without women. His share of the female vote is somewhere around 20 per cent.
It’s over because Trump can’t win without some swing states or reliable Republican states. He’s trailing in most of the important swing states. And in some polls, Clinton is nearly even with him in highly religious, Republican Utah.
It’s over because Republicans up for re-election in the Senate and in Congress are abandoning him in droves.
It’s over because this behaviour is indefensible.
Perhaps most surprising to me has been the surprise at any of this. Trump spent a decade on American talk radio as a C-list celebrity, rating women’s appearances, memorably quipping that a flat-chested woman could never be a ‘‘10’’. Trump, the man who ‘‘cherishes women,’’ but has spent decades debasing them, has been hiding in plain sight for the entire election season.
The man who said Hillary Clinton didn’t ‘‘look presidential’’ is the same man who insinuated on Thursday that the People magazine story is untrue because the reporter is ugly.
Oh, the irony. Looks like he’s about to get trounced by a woman.