Trump supporters at Kissimmee rally just want to ‘lock her up’

Sharon Day was deep into a harsh critique of “Crooked Hillary” and the Democrats when it happened. 

“So what do you say?” she asks the thousands seated in Kissimmee’s Silver Spurs Arena as they wait to hear remarks from Republican nominee Donald Trump. “What do you say that we finally close the sordid chapter of perversion this November rather than bring it back to the White House with those Clintons!”

The co-chair of the Republican National Committee tried to go on with her takedown but was interrupted by chants from the crowd. “Lock her up. Lock her up. LOCK HER UP!” they scream. 

After an awkward laugh, Day tells the crowd, “I think we defeat her, I don’t…I think we just defeat her. What do you think about that? Let’s defeat her at the box office and make sure that Donald Trump wins.”

It happened again two minutes later. She condemned the Democratic nominee and the crowd started again. “LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!” they shrieked and howled. One man stood up and bellowed, “LOCK HER THE HELL UP.”

Day grimaced again, saying, “I still say we defeat her. That will be more fun.”

These moments from the Trump rally on Thursday night weren’t long, but they were particularly revealing. Party officials had fanned the fire of of its base to win an election, but they were now scared of the flames. 

When Trump finally comes out in his glorious burnt orange aura, he blusters through his usual soundbites, though now there is the added entertainment of Trump using memes on placards to expand his arguments.

“We’re gonna build a wall, believe me folks!” he tells the crowd in one instance. Trump’s in Osceola County, where more than half of residents are Latino, but in this gaggle, there are few people of color. Later Trump repeated the wall line, asking the crowd, “And who’s going to build it?” The mostly white crowd shouted back, reverberating off the walls, “MEXICO!” 

And maybe that’s why his supporters adore him. Trump comes to what political analysts call the “swing part of the swing state,” the part of the I-4 corridor that decides elections, and doesn’t try to appeal to Puerto Ricans, the rapidly growing population that some have predicted could pick the next president for Florida and the nation. But whatever, right?

Toward the end, Trump drops his new favorite soundbite. “Obama is the founder,” he starts, and the crowd, shrieks the ending, “ISIS!” Trump has gone back and forth on whether he means Obama literally founded the militant group, which is false, or whether he meant that Obama and Clinton created the conditions through their policies for ISIS to emerge. He finally decided which he was going with this morning.  

As some of Trump’s giddy supporters left the stadium, their glee quickly turned to rage as they passed the press pen. They gave silent reporters the middle finger, and one man hoisted himself on the barrier, screaming, “Tell the truth, CNN! You’re fucking scum.” 

After draining their lasting anger on the people Trump calls “disgusting,” they calmly dispersed out of the building, got into their cars and drove back home. 

This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2016.