After a day’s worth of drama over the crowd size at Donald Trump’s rally here Thursday, the Republican presidential frontrunner’s campaign attempted to bar anyone who did not pledge their support for Trump from attending his event.
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“I’m here because you people are great”. While he has not been overly vocal over Obama’s executive action on guns, he did say on Monday that “pretty soon, you won’t be able to get guns”. “OK, you can get them out”.
But the city’s police chief, Brandon del Pozo, called out Trump’s estimate and said the crowds in Burlington swelled to only 2,000 people by about 4:30 p.m. Another 700 gathered at a park nearby to protest the oversold event. At the entrance to the rally people were asked if they supported and would vote for Trump. “I’m breathing so much of that air”, Trump said when he took the stage. “I’m here to listen to him and hopefully it’s all good”. “That was dumb. We can’t let anyone take over the microphone!”
“It would be a dream come true for me as well”, Sanders said. It was over a half-hour before he acknowledged he was in Bernie Sanders’ hometown – the Vermont U.S. senator and presidential candidate started his career in the building across the street. It definitely wont be Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, he said. The Vermont media coverage from Burlington is also broadcast in New Hampshire, where the first GOP primary is held.
As more of these outbursts occurred, paranoia seemed to set in among the crowd, and some Trump supporters tried to spot potential intruders before they acted up.
Meanwhile, Trump used his well-honed sense of stagecraft to ensure the event would draw maximum attention.
Outside the small theater, about 1,000 protesters rallied as Trump supporters waited in line nearby to get in.
As protesters drowned out Trump voices screaming “Bernie!” If Trump’s rise can be blamed on any one development over the last 30 years or so, it’s the fact that the ideas he espouses have been normalized by decades of right-wing pandering to extremism. But with Trump in town, he said a lot of people stopped in for a bite to eat.
Gerney notes that this would be similar to proposals for “national concealed carry reciprocity”, a longtime goal of gun rights groups, which would use federal power to require states to honor concealed carry permits issued to people in other states who bring their guns across state lines.
“I’m taking care of my people, not people who don’t want to vote for me or are undecided”, he said.
Those who said they didn’t were escorted away, though some had obviously lied as the event was railroaded by protests.
But as the disruptions continued, Trump’s patience appeared to wear thin.
“It’s fun. Get him out”.
In Iowa, the first nominating state, Sanders acknowledged that “if the caucuses were held today, we would probably lose by a little bit”. “Get him out of here”, he said, before launching into a digression about the way he has learned to handle critics. “My first day, it gets signed, OK?” I want to run against him. “A guy walks in, kills them immediately”. As more protesters were booted throughout the event, they received a hero’s welcome from the assembly outside. “His foreign policy, he’s no nonsense, he keeps this country safe and that’s really what it’s all about”, said one man in line.
“It was so embarrassing to watch”, Trump said.
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One of the more pernicious narratives that’s arisen around the continuing success of Donald Trump of late is that, somehow, it’s all the left’s fault. It’s rare for a presidential candidate to come to Vermont and even more rare for a GOP front-runner to stop by the Green Mountain State.
