Trump fans: Impeachment trial just what base needed,
— It was billed as NOVI, MICH. the largest State of the Union watch party in the country.
The event, held in a movie theater and hosted by Michigan’s 11th Congressional District Republican Committee, was centered on one of the more traditionally staid affairs in American politics, but could easily have passed as the overflow room of one of President Donald Trump’s rallies.
Uniforms included “Make America Great Again” hats in every color; T-shirts reading “Keep Trump, Impeach Congress”; “Trump 2020” rhinestone brooches; and buttons featuring a swooping yellow tuft of fuzz in homage to the president’s mane.
Voters who’d forgotten their flair could stop by the front of the theater, where a row of card tables offered “Trump hairy pins” and Trump toboggans for purchase. New gear in tow, they might then grab a bag of popcorn at the next table, or register to vote at the next, or perhaps take a selfie with the life-size cardboard cutout of the president standing nearby.
Why had approximately 350 people decided to devote five hours of a Tuesday to this?
“We’re tired of watching President Trump be beat up,” Dawn Thorburn, 51, a retiree, explained. “This impeachment thing going on is a big farce, and we just want to show support for him, because it’s a joke what they’re trying to do.”
There was a time when voters like Thorburn may well have rationalized staying home on a night like this, watching the address in their pajamas, unshackled by the event’s one-popcorn-per-person rule. It was Trump himself who warned that winning might get tiring, that spoiling his supporters risked lulling them into a false sense of security before the 2020 election.
“The Trump base — they’re working. They’re busy. They don’t want to have to keep fighting for the president,” said Meshawn Maddock, a co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans. “We’ve all got a lot of other things we could be doing.”
But if the president’s core supporters have shown signs of flatlining, his impeachment has jolted them alive again. Of the near-dozen people interviewed at the watch party, almost all said the impeachment inquiry and trial had motivated a spike in their own activism, whether it was knocking on doors or registering as a precinct captain.
They seemed driven not so much by a desire to litigate the charges against Trump — though, to be clear, they believe he did nothing wrong — as by a mandate to protest the act of investigation altogether. Because in their view, Democrats, through impeachment, had disrespected him.
“It fires people up. It gets them mad,” Maddock said. “I mean, it’s exactly what the Trump base needed.”
Julia Nichols, 52, who works in the automotive industry, was among the fired-up and mad. Wearing a baby-pink MAGA hat and gold hoop earrings, reclining slightly in the theater’s plush chairs, she welcomed the feeling.
“What the Democrats have shown me is that they cannot be trusted. So that’s why I’ve become more of an activist, why I’ve gotten more active with the current campaign,” she said of impeachment. “I’m not going to take this crap sitting down.”
Nichols said she has long believed the greatest threat to Trump’s reelection was not the incumbent himself — what he’s done, what he hasn’t — but rather his own supporters.
“People can easily become complacent,” she said. “Because right now the economy is booming, people are doing good. And they may not feel that urgency to get out there.”
“That’s the greatest vulnerability,” she went on, “us not communicating to our family, friends, and neighbors what’s at stake in this election.”
As the president delivered his address, his visage casting the theater in a soft orange glow, the crowd made sure to vocalize their sense of the stakes. Whenever a Democrat appeared on screen, the crowd erupted in boos, along with a stray “Send them back!” for Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
They saved their loudest jeers for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — laughing as the president appeared to ignore her outstretched hand before the speech, booing as she ripped up her copy after it was over.
Hours before the address, Maddock said she was eager to see how Trump would handle the topic of impeachment. “They’re talking about how the president, he’s not even going to say the word ‘impeach’ in the speech,” she said of fellow Trump supporters.
Maddock wasn’t so sure. “He’s going to look out into that room,” she predicted, “and he’s going to see all the Democrats not standing, he’s going to look at the senators voting against him, or who’ve threatened to, and he’s going to go after them.”
Instead, Trump did not mention impeachment once, leaving it to his supporters — the ones who’ve been reinvigorated by the “sham” of it all, as one woman in Novi put it — to carry the torch.
Ultimately, many of those at the watch party seemed to prefer it that way. Throughout the night, voters spoke of Trump in a distinctly protective manner. They did so with pride, too — as if the task of defending the president, batting back his naysayers, was uniquely theirs, a solemn charge handed down from the man himself.
“We don’t go out there screaming and crying and yelling, but we are going to go out there and make sure that President Trump is treated with respect,” Thorburn said. “That’s what we want to protect — his position as president.
“However,” she added, “I do think President Trump can protect himself.”
Nichols quickly interjected. “But,” she argued, “we do need to have his back.”
Thorburn nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “We do need to have it.”