MAGA Unchained at Madison Square Garden – Carswellfamilyfoundation

Michelle Goldberg
Opinion

Opinion by Michelle Goldberg October 28, 2024

Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” Lollapalooza at Madison Square Garden on Sunday began with an iconic scene from the 1970 biopic “Patton” on the jumbotron. Striding in front of a giant American flag, George C. Scott, who plays the legendary World War II general, snarled at the Nazis: “We’re not just going to shoot the bastards. We’re going to cut out their living insides and use them to lubricate the tracks of our tanks.” While I suppose it was nice to hear anti-Adolf Hitler rhetoric at a Trump rally, the bellicose talk of total war was unnerving in the context of a campaign aimed at crushing domestic enemies.

The event, which featured nearly the entire MAGA firmament on a bill that lasted over six hours, opened with a performance by Texas comedian and podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe. His genuine racism surprised me a little, given that the Trump campaign usually tries to service its bigotry with a ghostly veneer of plausible deniability. “These Latinos love having babies, too,” he said. “There is no way out, they are not doing this, they are going inside, just like our country.” He continued, “I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of trash in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He then joked about black people carving watermelons for Halloween.

It was one of the nastiest Trump rallies I can remember, and that’s saying something. Speaker Grant Cardone, a businessman and prominent Scientologist, said of Trump’s election opponents, “We need to kill these other people,” and referred to Kamala Harris’ “pimps.” David Rehm, believed to be Trump’s childhood friend, held up a crucifix and called Harris the “Antichrist.” (He then announced he was running for mayor.) Radio host Sid Rosenberg said Democrats were “a bunch of degenerates,” prefacing it with an expletive. Trump once again called Democrats “the enemy from within.” The intense red lighting of the stadium and the frequent use of screaming heavy metal music gave the whole experience a hellish carnival feel, like watching professional wrestling in hell.

I doubt this event helped Trump get many votes. New York, despite Vivek Ramaswamy’s fantasies, is not a swing state. Hinchcliffe’s offensive remarks to a key voting bloc appeared to be a contribution to Harris’ campaign, prompting Puerto Rican artists including megastar Bad Bunny to endorse her.

But the rally still had several goals. Trump, who spent his life seeking acceptance from Manhattan elites who considered him a joke, probably found it deeply justifiable that he was revered at Madison Square Garden. “The King of New York has returned to reclaim the city he built,” shouted Donald Trump Jr. Sunday’s display of dominance in one of America’s bluest places seemed designed not only to stroke Trump’s ego but also to create a sense of inevitability around the Republican. restoration. “The madness has to stop, and the fact that we can put Madison Square Garden in the middle of New York City shows me that the spirit of the American people is here,” Trump Jr. said.

Throughout much of the event, there was a feeling that Trump’s followers would reject Harris’ victory, but Tucker Carlson made it clear in his manic, giddy speech. It was a deeply dishonest speech that nevertheless contained an important truth about the nature of Trump’s connection to his base. “He set us free in the deepest and truest sense,” Carlson said. “And the liberation he brought us was liberation from the obligation to lie. Donald Trump has given us all the opportunity to tell the truth about the world around us.”

This is both absurd and correct. Neither Trump nor Carlson, of course, are interested in truth in the empirical sense. But Carlson is right that Trump has given him the freedom to express the rancid truths of his heart. Trump has broken taboos that once would have prevented an aspiring conservative entertainer like Carlson from abandoning Holocaust denial, as he did just last month. It allowed him to reject the idea that Jan. 6 was an insurrection, an idea that Carlson on Sunday found ludicrous. And, most importantly, Trump gave Carlson and the rest of his followers permission to reject the idea that he could lose fairly, given how much love there is for him even in the supposedly hostile territory of Manhattan.

Deriding Harris as a “low-IQ Malaysian-Samoan ex-California prosecutor,” Carlson said it would be a big lie if she were declared the winner. “I find it very hard to believe that the rest of us would say, ‘You know what, Joe Scarborough, you’re right,'” he said, sarcastically referring to the MSNBC host. “You’re right, she won fair and square because she’s so impressive. I don’t think so. And for me this is liberation. It is the freedom to say what is obviously true for a free man and not for a slave.”

The message that the MAGA caravan brought to Madison Square Garden was that their movement would soon become completely unrestricted. “The United States is now an occupied country, but soon it will no longer be an occupied country,” Trump said, before promising “the largest deportation program in American history.” Placed in the center of a city with more immigrants than any other, it felt like an inverted promise of a coming occupation. Election Day, Trump said, will be “the day of liberation.” Sunday was a glimpse of what his version of liberation means.

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This article originally appeared in New York Times.

Michelle Goldberg/Damon Winter
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