Don grabbed the limelight like a child kicking over the Monopoly board
The audience inside the basketball arena are packed tighter than pilchards and the atmosphere doesn’t so much hum as gently throb.
For hours this 8,000- strong crowd have waited patiently, slurping their fizzy drinks, gnawing on hot dogs and enduring goodness knows how many renditions of We Are The Champions blasting garishly through the Tannoy.
Nearly all wear red caps and T- shirts emblazoned with ‘Make America Great Again’ or ‘Four More Years’ and there are so many long, craggy beards that we could be at a hells Angels biker convention.
Then, a familiar silhouette appears. his gait is slow and flat-footed, his wispy hair like a ball of candy floss dipped in custard. Midway to the stage, he stops for effect, swivels and gives a prizefighter’s double clench of the fists.
It is shortly after 7pm on Thursday and Donald J Trump had arrived with all the swagger of a leather-chapped cowboy and, no, this was not the President of the United States’ first rodeo.
‘It’s great to be back in America’s heartland,’ he announces in that slow, slightly cartoonish drawl more mimicked than that of any president in history. his supporters swarm around the stage, prompting much gesticulating among the dark-suited Secret Service agents, before launching into the inevitable chorus of ‘U-S-A! U-S-A!’ A!’
Welcome to Iowa, folks, land of fertile soil and the rootin’ tootin’ food production capital of America. here the political focus is supposed to be on Monday’s Democratic caucus, the first rung in deciding who will face Trump in November’s election. BUT
like an attentionstarved child who enjoys kicking over the Monopoly board, the Donald thought he would pitch up and steal all their oxygen. That a rally provided a distraction from his impeachment trial in the Senate probably didn’t hurt either.
Our location was Drake University in snowy Des Moines, a laidback, steak-and-eggs kinda place, albeit one lacking a certain dynamism. ‘ Sparse’ is the adjective that most springs to mind walking round this slightly deserted city.
In fact, this is the home of author Bill Bryson, who once remarked wryly: ‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’
Outside the arena amid the sickly smelling fast-food vans and Trump memorabilia hawkers, some of those queuing had been camped out since Tuesday – no small act of dedication considering the mercury can plunge to a toe-numbing -5C (23F) come sundown.
Some such as earl Minks, 63, had made the journey because he wanted to show his support for
Trump’s economic policies. Others, such as Sarah Underberg, 46, were here for more prosaic reasons. ‘I just lurrrve my President,’ she yells excitedly.
For a Commander in Chief whose job approval ratings this week hit his highest level since entering the White house, it is extraordinary how thin-skinned he remains.
No sooner had he begun his speech than Trump began laying into the ‘failing’ New York Times newspaper over its unflattering editorials.
Large swathes of rhetoric were dedicated to insulting the Democrats’ presidential candidates: ‘Crazy’ Bernie Sanders; ‘ Sleepy Joe’ Biden; ‘Little Mike’ Bloomberg. he witheringly calls Massachusetts Senator elizabeth Warren ‘ Pocahontas’ on account of her contested claim to be of Native American heritage.
The crowd, of course, lap it up. ‘Drain the swamp!’ they chant. ‘Build a wall!’
The Left, he said, were ‘sick’. he name- dropped the Green New Deal, a proposal to drastically reduce energy emissions introduced by influential New York representative Alexandria OcasioCortez, once derided as a ‘whack job’ by Trump. ‘ They wanna kill o our cows,’ he shouted. ‘ That m means you’re next...’
When he wasn’t barracking he was boasting. he flaunted the new trade deal he’d signed this week with Canada and Mexico which he says was going to make them all rich: ‘You farmers in Iowa are going to have to get bigger tractors and a hell of a lot more land,’ h he harrumphed.
Braggadocio oozed out of every g gland. Thanks to the Prez’s genius wheeler-dealing, he claimed, he’d saved not just the farming industry but the energy and manufacturing sectors too. He’D
just come from Michigan where he’d also got the car industry up and running again. ‘It’s booming there – thanks to me!’ Trump claimed he had also ‘100 per cent’ destroyed Islamic State after killing its leader Abu al-Baghdadi last October.
‘The whole world respect us now. America is respected again.’ As Trump said this, a look of self-satisfaction parked itself on the presidential lips.
eventually he turned to his troubles with the Senate back in Washington. Trump described his impeachment as a ‘deranged witch hunt hoax’ cooked up by the
Socialists on Capitol hill. ‘ We’ve had one of the best years in our history… and I got impeached! They impeached Trump! Can you believe it?’ Down in front of me, a man in a stars-and- stripes hat shook his head in disgust. Those goddam Democrats. ‘We love you Trurrrmp’ he hollered. ‘It won’t work,’ the President assured them. ‘Watch. Just watch.’
After covering the recent general election in Britain, what struck me with this speech was what Trump didn’t mention. Transport. hospitals. Matters that you’d think would be key electoral issues barely merited even a mention.
Trump’s language is also like nothing you’ve ever heard in politics; so crass it can be at times. At one point, he told what was meant to be a touching a story about an injured soldier he’d met who’d ‘had his legs blown off’. No room for subtlety here.
But then Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the political rulebook. The more he defies convention, the more his support base feel like he is their man.
When it was time to leave, the President chose to give the crowd one final message. ‘ Iowa,’ he squawked, voice now rasping a tad. ‘The best is yet to come.’
And as the cheers went up around the hall, you could tell every single one of them believed him.