Jack Tame: Trump, the joke that keeps giving

Donald Trump. Photo / AP

Three months ago it was all just a big joke. Donald Trump? Get out! Surely The Apprentice can't be rating that badly?

I went to his rally in Dallas. He sold out tickets to a basketball stadium owned by his billionaire friend. Twenty thousand seats. Someone was apparently scalping tickets online for $200 a pop. Trump calls these supporters the silent majority.

Twenty thousand isn't a silent majority. It's a loud and fat majority. A white majority. A patriotic majority. A majority dressed in non-ironic stars-and-stripes shirts and ten-gallon cowboy hats. Many carried trays of hot dogs and chips to their seats.

"Helping Trump put another brick in the wall," read a badge on someone's chest.

Roger Waters would be so proud.

William got a seat in the front row and told me he doesn't much like illegal immigrants.

"If we went to Mexico and did what they did, we'd be shot down," he said with surety. William wants to build a wall.

So does Patricia. She was raised a Democrat but she's worried about Isis taking over the United States.

"Just look at what's happening in Syria," she told me. Again, with surety.

The warm-up speaker tottered on stage in five-inch pumps.

"I'm a god-fearing, gun-toting, baby-loving, Benghazi-truth-seeking, Army wife loving, border-fence building, common-core fighting, one nation under God-pledging Mom!"

The crowd bellowed.

Trump can hold an audience. He delivers a good joke.

In Texas, it was 25 minutes before he so much as ventured near any policy. Instead, he made wisecracks about his Republican opponents and asked the audience to check his hair. It was a masterly performance.

The protesters circled the stadium. They had kids on the shoulders and a few carried American flags. A line of cops separated them from a big screen with Trump's face.

"USA! USA! USA!"

A teenage girl became so upset I worried she might start crying.

"It's like everyone in America is celebrating a guy for being a racist pig," she said to me.

But it's all just a big joke.Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB

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