Donald Trump takes the stage at the Save America rally in Youngstown, Ohio on September 17, 2022. JEFF SWENSEN / AFP
They drive for hours, sleep in parking lots, share sandwiches and rural souvenirs. In their friendship, seniority matters less than attendance. Among the Front Row Joes, we stand out for the number of Donald Trump meetings we’ve attended. In Youngstown, Ohio, a mecca of the steel industry, Sharon Anderson was on her 27th, Saturday, September 17th. The 66-year-old mother of five owns a farm in southeast Tennessee. She often leaves her husband with the day-to-day business to support the former president, “within a ten-hour drive”. It’s time to mobilize: the midterm elections are upon us. “The threat is clear, Communism is at the door and the door is knocking,” she said of the Democrats.
At his side, Mike Boatman, 54, is surprised that so much enthusiasm surprises us. He happened to be at a meeting place a week before the meeting to secure a spot in front of the grandstand. He followed 43. “It’s a small sacrifice compared to what this man has done for the country for four years, to all the false allegations against him. Sharon agrees. “You can’t prove anything. Otherwise he would have already been fired. And the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the role of Donald Trump’s main instigator? On that fatal day, both were there, near the federal building, without entering it. “The crowd was peaceful,” they affirm, despite the videos, about the work of the parliamentary committee of inquiry. “It was infiltrated,” claims the grandmother. “If Trump had asked us to take the Capitol, there would have been no Capitol,” adds Mike Boatman, who lives in Indiana and works on construction sites there.
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Both are among the unconditional supporters of the former president. Externally, nothing has changed within the MAGA movement (Make America Great Again, Donald Trump’s slogan) in two years. Same subjects, same sources. The cult of personality surrounding the leader draws on the anti-system resentments of these MAGA folk who embrace everything: the “radical left”, teachers, mainstream media and tech giants.
“We got lost in their imagination”
The thousands of people who attended on Saturday make it clear: your core is harder than ever. But how big is the fruit around? While Joe Biden’s popularity rating has soared from an all-time low this summer, Donald Trump’s is raising questions. His hold on the Republican base remains strong, but his irrevocable conspiratorial tendencies and legal troubles may limit his ability to seduce more moderate voters. The speech Trump delivered Saturday night is a testament to this sectarian frenzy. Fantasies, conspiratorial allusions, the designation of internal enemies operate in a closed circuit on planet MAGA, where the law of gravity takes on a different meaning. “A kind of semi-fascism,” said Joe Biden recently.
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