On a perishing Saturday evening in Manchester, a line of hardy New Englanders snakes along Elm Street farther than the eye can see, waiting to get in.
Three days out from the New Hampshire Republican primary and the Trump campaign delivers a show that is designed to crush the questions and, perhaps too, the morale of Republicans scattered throughout the Granite state who do not share his vision for America.
The rally is in the SNHU Arena, a big hockey venue, and its Elm Street address offers all sorts of tantalising “Nightmare on...” scenarios for the “fake news media” the former president will soon decry from the stage. It’s a scene. A section of Elm Street near the venue is cordoned off by police vans and security is heavy. The line is long because everyone has to pass through the Secret Service security checks, which are rigorous.
This is, of course, the 45th president of the United States which people have come out to see. One of Trump’s great tricks is to return with the same tour, casting himself as saviour and outsider. Except this time around, the merchandise stalls are bigger and slicker and line the entire street. Across the street, anti-Trumpers have placed two vans showing videos on repeat splicing old footage of dictators past with those of Trump, supported by an ominous voiceover.
“Look at this stuff,” someone laughs. “I love the conspiracies.”
The night is dark and the cold is bone-chilling, permanent, unpleasant. The crowd, though, is good-humoured and rustle up solidarity through waiting in line. They agree they’ve never witnessed a crowd like this before, not for a gig in Manchester. And it is old-school, like scenes from pre-digital concert-going when the superfans would wait all night. And that’s who have come to see Trump this evening.
“I’m gonna get a Trump cap. All the liberals at work will go crazy!”
“My feet! You go to a Trump rally and lose three toes to frostbite!”
“This line has gotta be half a mile.”
There’s one guy, though, who has clearly spent the afternoon enjoying the Manchester hostelries. He’s lit. And he’s angry. He’s angry because people are cold and he seems convinced that this is a manifestation of a softness that has crept into the national character.
“You cold?” he says, incredulous, to a blank stranger. “You cold? You’re standin’ there like you’re a f**kin’ popsicle.” He gets no reply. “He’s gonna get punched out sooner or later,” someone murmurs. He moves on and asks someone else where they are from and when he hears South America, something snaps. “Christ. Isn’t anybody around here from New England?”
Yes, is the short answer. Thousands. The arena is heaving with New Englanders ready to hear the gospel according to. The doors opened at three o’clock and they spent the teatime hour listening to Elvis classics and dancing in the aisles. When Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and Trump loyalist, appeared to take his seat near the front of the stage, he causes a rush of fans eager to grab a photograph with him.
When Trump appears, they play one of his anthems, Lee Greenwood’s country classic God Bless the USA. He stands on the big stage, designed with a 70s tuxedo-style display of red, white and blue frills, begins a swaying little dance and then wisely thinks better of it and stands there, basking in the applause.
The Trump fans already know what he is going to say because they have seen and heard him say it all week. The general message – of reclaiming the White House from the Democrats and Joe Biden – has already been told a hundred times.
On this night, Trump’s true intention is to persuade his voters to end the register-a-vote system in the state that allows non-Republicans to vote in the party’s primary campaign.
“Last week I said that in a place called Iowa and now I am saying it to you: the whole world is watching you,” he tells his audience before honing in on Nikki Haley, his rival for the Republican nomination.
“So here in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley, I know her well. A guy is screaming ‘birdbrain!’ But she has made an unholy alliance with the Rinos, the Never-Trumpers, Americans for no prosperity, the globalists, the radical-left communists. They want to get liberals and Biden supporters. And you have a governor here that allows Democrats to vote in the Republican primary.
“And he’ll be calling me after the election: ‘Sir, I just want to congratulate you.’ This guy lets independents, many of whom are Democrats, vote in the primary. In Iowa, she came in last, by the way. Fifty per cent of Haley’s voters said they would vote for Joe Biden in November. What the hell kind of Republican candidate is that?”
Shortly after that, Trump introduces a series of political grandees from Haley’s home state of South Carolina, including Henry McMaster, who occupies the governorship that was previously hers. Trump turns emcee as they take the stage waving.
“Lieutenant governor Pamela Evette – she’s fantastic. Attorney general Alan Wilson – just won a very big case by the way, big case, Alan. South Carolina house speaker Murrell Smith, love that name,” he says, before telling the crowd, as an aside, “We are gonna be there in three weeks so you know what I’m doing: I’m kissing ass.”
Or, alternatively, cracking the whip, literally lining up a cast of South Carolina’s Republican political grandees while Ron DeSantis travails through a lonely advance campaign in that state and Haley perseveres with a series of events that are like boutique rallies in comparison to this show of Maga muscle.
Maybe, deep down, the Trump strategists are nervous about the unknown quantity lurking in New Hampshire. In a momentary lapse into speculative doubt, Trump conceded that because New Hampshire permits independents to vote in this primary, it is hard for his team to gauge the number who might endorse Haley.
Her percentage has improved radically since midsummer, when she polled at less than 6 per cent in New Hampshire to Trump’s 47 per cent. Latest figures show Trump now at 49 per cent, but Haley, at 34 per cent, has worked hard to keep the Republican vote from settling for the House of Trump – for another few days, at least.
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