Good day all. Last night, (February 2, 2016), I went to the Donald Trump rally with a friend in Milford, New Hampshire. Here are my observations.
The rally was held at the Hampshire Hills Athletic Club in Milford, NH. There wasn’t sufficient parking for the anticipated number of people, so arrangements were made to have people park in different locations around the area. Shuttle buses were were available to transport the crowd.
When I arrived, there was already a huge line of people waiting to get in. There were easily 1000 people outside and more arriving with each bus. The people running the security were on the ball and we only had to wait about 10-15 minutes before we went through the metal detectors. While we were waiting in line, we came up on a “Prohibited Items” sign. It had a list of things you couldn’t bring through. Guns, ammo, explosives, etc.
Being a wise ass, I was making comments to the people around me. “Damn! I can’t bring my block of C4 in?” “Hey! They aren’t banning Particle Beam cannons, so I’m OK there.” While I was making jokes, and people were laughing, one man mentioned that his friend had to go back to their cars. He was taking their guns they had with them and locking them up. Yes, people were armed and were caught a bit off guard by the sign. The reason why became clear once we got in the door.
My friend was caught by surprise when he saw the presence of the Secret Service and the TSA. I was aware that Trump and several of the other candidates were now getting S.S. protection. Out came the cellphone and car keys, through the metal detector and then a quick check with a hand wand by a uniformed Secret Service Agent.
We then went into the tennis court where the rally was being held. There was some guy singing the praises of “Donald J. Trump,” (Hey, we don’t need to hear Trump’s middle initial over and over again). There was also a platform with about a dozen cameras on it with their film and sound crew. These were obviously from the various news networks. After a while, the boring speaker wrapped up and left the podium.
People were standing around, chatting and generally enjoying themselves. In fairly short order, the tennis court was filled to capacity. Around 6:45pm, Ann Coulter came to the podium and gave a 10 minute speech. As usual, she was very sharp tongued, but didn’t mention Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth once. She did go after Marco Rubio, comparing him to Barack Obama. (Ouch!) In this case it was their near identical political careers. (Although Rubio did show up and actually vote in the Florida legislature and United States Senate.
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsejnRqZ7H8′]
Coulter also got a few laughs at the expense of Lindsey Graham. I don’t recall the exact quote, but she said something like “People are as excited as Lindsey Graham in a fabric shop!” That line brought the house down, and now you can see why Linseed Grahmnesty never had, and never will have a chance at the Oval Office.
After Ann Coulter completed belittling the opposition, former Senator Scott Brown came to the podium. There was some polite applause and not a few boos. Many people, myself included, blame him for losing a winnable race to defeat Jean Shaheen. Of course, his carpet bagging had a lot to do with that.
Now people were starting to wonder where Trump was. He was scheduled to appear at 7pm and it was about 10 after. People, including myself, began noticing some activity on a second level observation room. I’m assuming that Trump was up there and giving interviews. (He was)
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6gFKs8HEyQ’]
Finally, around 7:30pm, Brown announced Donald Trump and he came up to the podium to very loud cheers and applause. He talked about many things, including his second place finish. He did accept that not showing up for the Fox News debate was probably the cause for his showing, but that he would have done it again. Then he talked about raising $6 million for wounded veterans and about the other wealthy people he called to also donate.
One of the things he also talked about was how the media was misrepresenting what he was saying. One of them was Obamacare. He said flat out he wants to repeal it and look for something a lot better to replace it. He also hammered on the media and the, not inaccurate, complaints of their poor reporting and inaccuracies. I happened to look at the camera platform and the camera crews weren’t overjoyed with Trumps comments.
He also spoke about the deficit and national debt, the trade agreements that have not benefited the United States, Illegal aliens, when he differentiated from lawful immigrants. (Coulter also made the same differentiation) He also talked about the awful deals Obama has been making with flat out enemies of the United States, and spoke at length about the Bergdahl deal. He referred to Bergdahl as a traitor. He also went after secretary of State John “Liveshot” Kerry, (Although he didn’t use the term Liveshot), and his incompetence.
He took a few shots at Ted Cruz, mostly regarding the Cruz campaign’s dirty tricks against Dr. Carson in Iowa. He also brought out a set of statistics on the spending by the campaigns and how they translated into votes. He let fly at Jeb! Bush and how he blew something like $2800 per person to get no delegates.
At one point someone shouted out something that attracted Trump’s attention. I couldn’t hear it from where I was, but I think it was a slam against Obama. Trump made the remark that the last time someone slammed Obama, he didn’t “Reprimand” the person making the remarks. He then looked at the person and said “Consider yourself reprimanded.” The crowd exploded into laughter, including myself.
Trump spoke for about an hour and the crowd was in a really good mood. Towards the end of the event, Trump started calling out for Boston radio talk show host, Howie Carr. I don’t know if Carr was in the crowd or not. I couldn’t see him and I noticed that everyone was looking for him. Trump then called out Ann Coulter and told her to stand up. Then, he said “Oh, you are standing.” which brought another round of laughs.
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRalJVkltNY’]
I came away actually leaning more towards Trump then I was previously. (Editors note: I’ve narrowed my choices to Trump or Cruz. I won’t support the Flamingo Dancer from Florida. A/W) I’m still at the coin flipping stage, (Although I won’t use the one the Democrats used in Iowa), and probably won’t make a decision until next Tuesday when I walk into the voting booth. After that, the next round of dropouts should happen. (As of this posting, Rand Paul has dropped out) While I think he should throw in the towel, I’m not to sure Juan! Bush will quit until the money he has in the bank has run out. He’s pretty much reduced to being a spoiler and bomb thrower.
Now, as I mentioned at the start, the crowd control to get into the event was handled almost perfectly. I wish I could say the same for the exit. I knew, from the crowds in the room and the limited number of exits, that it would take some time to get out and it did. The problem was the shuttle buses.
The handling of the crowds making their way to the buses was apparently handled by Hampshire Hills. (I may be wrong about this, it’s just my impression) When people made their way down to the parking lot, only one bus had arrived, and I don’t think the driver was quite prepared for the crowds. There were hundreds of people all trying to reach that one bus.
Finally he opened the doors, and the people handling crowd control started trying to get people in some sort of order. (A forlorn hope at best) Then other buses started arriving to take people to the other parking locations. (One of these was the local Wal-Mart) The buses started lining up, but weren’t opening their doors to let people on.
It turned out that the people handling the situation had not anticipated the numbers of people and were only going to allow one bus to be filled at a time. Fortunately, people were in a good mood and just made sport of the situation. Eventually, my friend and I found a bus that was taking people to where we were parked and managed to bulldoze are way on board. I didn’t realize how close we were to the location. We probably could have walked there in half the time.
All in all, it was a fun event and I’m glad I went. Trump is a gifted speaker and is saying generally all the right things. Can he go the distance? If he wins the New Hampshire primary and the South Carolina primary, I think the nomination is his, no matter what the GOP(e) tries to do. As I’ve said before, this is going to be an interesting election year.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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I really want to like Trump. I just can’t trust him.
Trust, but verify. I was leaning toward Cruz but his antics in Iowa didn’t help his reputation. If it was a couple of staffers, then he needs to borrow Obama’s bus and throw them under it.