Perhaps they just wanted to get a last look at him before he's impeached.
Not much time left now.
I'm really not looking for a rock star (or past prime reality TV star) to be the leader of my country. I've never quite understood the appeal of such rallies. Trump obviously has; his whole m.o. has been to feed into the anger and frustrating that people, particularly of a certain age and demographic feel and channel it into support for himself. As a registered independent, and as a business owner, traditional Republican ideals should appeal to me more (lower taxation, less regulation, etc). But Trump is hardly a traditional republican and along with those traditional concepts came the grotesque caricature of what the party has morphed into under his leadership and it's barely recognizable to me. I was never fully in either red or blue camp but at this point, I can't see myself voting GOP on anything.
I don't think Obama gave enough credit to entrepreneurs and business owners. Often times it felt like there was a theme coming from his administration that business owners are just out to screw their employees, and this coming from a man who never really had a real private sector job in his life. But overall, I thought he was a great president who did much to move this country forward under very trying circumstances (an economy in free fall, a GOP opposition that stonewalled rather than compromised). And as time has gone by, I find myself, growing counter to the normal way of starting out very liberal and slowly aging to a more conservative ideology later in life, and I find, at least on most social issues, that I'm becoming more liberal and progressive and slowly turning more blue. Although to be clear, Obama himself was more a centrist.
I can see that many people felt lost and disenfranchised with the way things were going in 2015. I personally didn't but I can understand how many did. I didn't vote for Trump and I never would have voted for Trump because as a native New Yorker, like most people from the tri-state area, we knew he was a lying, two faced opportunist at best, and a hard core white color criminal and borderline senile at worst. I personally know two people who had business dealings with him back in the 90s and 2000s and both were really screwed. These weren't just newspaper stories but first hand accounts. But what I find incredulous, years later, is that this privileged, rich, New York billionaire, has managed to con so many salt of the earth folk into REALLY believing that he's fighting the good fight for them, and not just for his own ego and for lining his own pockets. To me, what I see in that picture, is the biggest con job he ever pulled.
I look at the picture above and I can't help but think, wow, so many sad and gullible people. Maybe they believed him in 2015. But now? Today? After everything that he's done. It's like tribal warfare. The line has been drawn. They've picked a side and right or wrong, they're sticking with him. These are people not just disenfranchised from life or prosperity but from reality itself. Rallies like this scare me. They truly do. It's not just here in the US but you see again in Europe (France, Germany, Poland, etc) and Asia (Philippines, Turkey, etc), there is a resurgence of nationalism. A frightening return to the kind of ignorance and scape goating that led us to so much conflict in the first half of the 20th century.
I personally don't think Trump will make it to the 2020 election. But I think he will continue to be a disruptive presence long after he resigns or is removed from office. He has indeed become a rock star. But whoever wants him can have him.
