‘Politics Can Do Strange Things to Demented People’
In a race where only a few states are up for grabs, Pennsylvania may determine the fate of the 2024 election. Polls suggest that former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are virtually tied in a fight for the state’s 19 delegates. Both Democrats and Republicans are pouring millions into messaging through advertisements, town halls, and large rallies. Last night in Pittsburgh, Harris’s most powerful surrogate, former President Barack Obama, delivered his first major campaign address of the season, just 24 hours after Trump held two Pennsylvania events in one day. Their rhetorical styles couldn’t be more different. But each former president landed on a similar, aggressive line of attack: They don’t care about you.
Trump spoke to a not-quite-full arena in Reading, Pennsylvania. He painted a dark, chaotic portrait of America. Migrants, Trump said, have been coming from places “all over the world into your cities and small towns, changing them forever, and I have to say: ruining them.” Trump positioned himself as America’s savior, sounding rather autocratic: “I will liberate Pennsylvania and our entire nation from this vast migrant invasion of murderers and child predators and gang members, terrorists, drug dealers, and thugs.” He referred to his predecessor as Barack Hussein Obama and repeatedly attacked Harris’s intelligence, deeming her “not smart” and “a dumb person.” He droned on for nearly 90 minutes, finding no shortage of synonyms with which to denigrate her. “Kamala Harris is grossly incompetent, she cannot be trusted, and she is totally ill-equipped to do the job of president of the United States of America,” Trump said.
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He also zigzagged even more than usual, making pointless and nonsensical remarks. He spoke of his “beautiful body,” his love of corn. He talked about Howard Stern’s radio ratings and riffed about the forgotten ’90s Whoopi Goldberg comedy Eddie. “Politics can do strange things to demented people,” Trump said. People started to trickle out of the arena long before he was finished.
But his supporters seemed as faithful to him—and as anti-Harris—as ever. A 29-year-old named Anthony Malcom was wearing a shirt that read IT’S OKAY TO HATE A COMMIE. “There’s nothing on the other side of the ticket that’s gonna ever make me change that vote,” he told me. “I don’t like paying taxes. I don’t want to keep having my income stolen from me to pay for stuff that I don’t even believe in.” Another attendee, a 54-year-old woman named Sylvia Reedy, was wearing a Trump cowboy hat and a shirt that read WE THE PEOPLE ARE PISSED OFF. Immigration was her chief motivating issue. “I want them all outta here,” she told me. “Day one, I want him in the office, deport everybody, they need to leave.” Reedy, herself, immigrated legally from India in 1984 after 10 years of trying. “This is the life I came to, for freedom,” she said. “Now Kamala Harris is stopping it. She just happens to be from India, as well. And she’s a disgrace, is what she is. From one Indian, I can see a fake. She’s a fraud. I don’t have nothing nice to say about her.”
Not all Trump followers live in a world of Trumpian doom and gloom. A man from Macungie, Pennsylvania, named Al Setzer, resented being categorized as prejudiced. He told me about growing up in New York City. “I sat on a bus with every race in the world, you know what I mean?” In his youth, he was an anti-war liberal, but became a Republican after being turned off by the Vietnam War protests, which he found disrespectful to soldiers. As the son of German immigrants, he was likewise offended when opponents of Trump compared him to Hitler.
“Deep down inside, I believe Trump is a good person,” he said. “These people wouldn’t be here if Trump was a phony,” Setzer added, gesturing at his fellow rally-goers. He told me how much he loved the United States. “I think we’ve got to appreciate the fact that we’re in a great country.”
Last night, on the other side of the state, Obama addressed a packed gymnasium at the University of Pittsburgh. The 44th president remains the closest thing the Democratic party has to someone with Trump-level appeal. Before Senator Bob Casey could even finish introducing Obama, attendees began craning their necks and prepping their phone cameras, as though a celebrity was in the building. Many Democrats savor any chance to relive the energy of his 2008 campaign. (A banner in the crowd read YES SHE CAN.) Obama played a few of his old hits, referring to himself as “the hope-y, change-y guy” and repeating his latter-day mantra: “Don’t boo—vote!” As was the case at this year’s Democratic National Convention, he also seemed to enjoy laying into Trump.
“Do you think Donald Trump has ever changed a tire in his life?” Obama asked. “You think Donald Trump’s ever changed a diaper?” he said later. (“His own!” an audience member screamed. “I almost said that, but I decided I shouldn’t say it,” Obama replied, stifling laughter.) He likened Trump’s bombast to that of Fidel Castro’s. He mocked the Trump-branded Bible that retails for $59.99. “He wants you to buy the word of God, Donald Trump edition!” Obama quipped. “He’s got his name right there, next to Matthew and Luke.” Throughout a roughly 40-minute speech, Obama characterized Trump as a charlatan. “If Donald Trump does not care that a mob might attack his own vice president,” Obama asked, “do you think he cares about you?”
[Read: Barack Obama and Donald Trump can’t stand each other]
Obama was most effective when using Trump’s own words for comedic effect—such as Trump’s “concept of a plan” line from the September debate. “Honey, did you do the dishes? I have a concept of a plan to do the dishes.” But when he demeans Trump, he also stoops to his level. Coming up to the edge of making a joke about a 78-year-old man in diapers is pretty far away from his wife’s positivity maxim, “When they go low, we go high.”
In indicting Trump’s character, Obama did have a higher purpose. He was hoping to show how Trump, and Trumpism, had steered America away from its more noble self. “For Trump, freedom is getting away with stuff,” Obama said. He noted that each party has a starkly different interpretation of the word freedom. “We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life—how we worship, who we marry, what our family looks like,” he said.
The crowd thoroughly enjoyed listening to their hero mock the bully. Most attendees just seemed thrilled to have Obama back on the campaign trail.
Yesterday afternoon, I spoke with D’Anne Truss, a city bus driver from Allegheny County, who told me she remembered standing in line for hours to see Obama during his first campaign for president, and that she was now proud to be back with members of her local transit union. She said that the Democrats’ support for labor unions was more important to her than anything else this election. Farther down the line was Deborah Marnick, wearing a shirt with a quote from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor: With fear for our Democracy, I dissent. Marnick told me that the Court’s ruling in favor of Trump in the presidential-immunity case had “shocked” her. “Without democracy, there’s nothing else,” she said. To her, this election was all about Trump, and it was existential.
At the snack bar, I met a 30-year-old named Chris who was wearing a lime-green sticker that read vote in the Charli XCX Brat font. (“I had no idea what it was a reference to,” he said with a laugh.) He told me that he had initially registered to vote as a Republican because he grew up in a staunchly pro-life family, but that, in 2016, he had come around to Democrats after developing a more nuanced view of abortion. Some rally-goers showed up in support of veterans; some had come to support the LGBTQ community. Many people were championing women’s rights—and the potential first female president.
With just over three weeks left in the race, each side seems convinced that they fundamentally can’t trust the other with the country—or with the election. At both events, speakers talked about the need to win in November by large margins. “If enough of us make our voices heard, we will leave no doubt about the election,” Obama assured. Trump had his own vision: “We’re gonna make this a landslide. We want to make it a real referendum,” he said. Peace seemed far from assured.