https://www.yahoo.com/politics/in-line-to-see-trump-1318469047787574.htmlThese are the people who wait hours to see Trump
Jon Ward
December 11, 2015
Attendees at a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump board the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, S.C., Monday, Dec. 7, 2015. (Photo: Mic Smith/AP)
CHARLESTON, S.C. — The people kept coming, and the line kept growing and growing.
The line of people to see Donald Trump snaked from the entrance to the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier down the parking lot, back up toward the entrance again and then back around alongside another lane of cars. By the time the fire marshal stopped letting people in, with almost 2,000 people onboard the ship, there were still around 1,000 people waiting outside.
For three hours, I walked among the Trump supporters standing in line, engaging them in conversations that lasted between 10 and 20 minutes, trying to better understand who they were and what had drawn them to come see Trump.
The portrait of a Trump supporter — drawn from those conversations as well as an extra three hours of interviews with attendees at a rally in northern Virginia the week before — did correspond much of the time to the basic profile: white, middle or working class, resentful of immigration, overwhelmed by dramatic changes in morality and technology, and fearful and angry about being left behind culturally and economically.
And so there were plenty of men like Willis Priester, a 63-year-old independent contractor, who told me that President Obama is a Muslim and that gay people are “the devil.” He was quick to condemn Muslims but hesitant to voice his objections to homosexuality. Once he did, however, it was clear he felt just as strongly, if not more so, about both the acceptance of gay marriage and about the sudden social disapproval of his views.
There was also no question that the heightened alarm over terrorism after the San Bernardino, Calif., attack on Dec. 2 was drawing some people toward Trump. Trump’s “toughness with the situation” was a point of appeal to one man who gives guided tours of the Yorktown, and others voiced similar sentiments.
But I was surprised at how a fair number of those I met at the Trump rallies were not like Priester. Trump is drawing people who defy stereotype. They were not necessarily older, or all that conservative, or even white. What’s needed, they feel, is someone larger-than-life, someone who they hope can bring about change and fix what’s broken in the country through sheer force of personality.
For these people, Trump’s nativism and faux-populist appeals weren’t the main appeal. For some, Trump stood for a return to hard work and personal responsibility. For others, Trump appeals to something instinctive about their sense of what’s needed. And for others, his celebrity and entertainment appeal drew them and functions in their view as a form of leadership that may carry over into effective governance.
Curtis Quinn, 54, and his wife, Janelle, were stylishly dressed like the kind of couple you might see at a hip Brooklyn bar. The considerably younger Mrs. Quinn wore expensive-looking boots, formfitting pants with a camouflage design, and made the black “Make America Great Again” cap on her head look like a fashion statement.
She was originally from Milwaukee. Quinn was from just outside Boston originally, and is a thoracic surgeon here in Charleston. He wore a leather jacket covered in colorful patches, which represented the military service of five men in his family. One grandfather, he said, served in the “Lost Battalion” in World War I. Another served in the U.S. Navy. His father fought in the Battle of the Bulge. One uncle flew 48 bombing missions over Germany in World War II. And another uncle took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, Quinn said.
“I will never be the caliber of people these people are,” Quinn told me in a Northeastern accent, referring to his forebears. “Never will be. I don’t have that in me. But I see that however lax I’ve became from this generation, the now generation is so much worse.”
“I just don’t see motivation. I don’t see hard work. I don’t see ethics. Things like that that I think are totally lacking,” Quinn said. He spoke with passion, but did not come across as angry. He was warm, engaging. The Quinns have two young children, and Curtis said he didn’t want them to grow up in a country where the government controls too much of human activity, commerce and thought.
