Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Gastonia Municipal Airport in Gastonia, North Carolina. Photo / AFP
The Herald’s deputy political editor Thomas Coughlan is in the US for the presidential election. Follow his campaign diary here.
OPINION
Donald Trump got everyone to their feet with Luciano Pavarotti - yes, the opera singer.
He was 1 hour and 40 minutes late. At 7.30pm, the time he was meant to come on, the New York Times reported he’d only just wrapped up another rally in Salem, Virginia.
I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, just across the border, waiting for Trump’s third and final rally of the day. Both Trump, the Republican candidate and former President and his rival, Democratic candidate and Vice-President Kamala Harris have kept up an impressive schedule in the final days of the campaign, swarming into the swing states. For a brief moment on Saturday, their planes met on the runway in North Carolina.
People were excited but restless inside the Greensboro Coliseum (yes, they spell it that way). We’d been told to arrive before 5, but a long line had formed by 2. Most in the line managed to enter the Coliseum by 6, following a fairly extensive security search by the Secret Service.
Barring about 30 minutes of speeches from down ballot candidates, the crowd was entertained by a playlist of Guns n’ Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kid Rock sampling Lynyrd Skynyrd and Van Morrison.
Then, at about 9 o’clock, someone backstage cranked up the volume and blasts a Pavarotti and James Brown duet of It’s a Man’s World. The speakers crackled making the lyrics are almost unintelligible. The volume lift was a signal Trump was on his way, shuddering the crowd out of its Pepsi-induced sugar coma. The crowd rose to its feet, but the music is so loud some placed their hands over their ears. The crowd didn’t seem Pavarotti fans, but to be fair, at that volume, who could be? One woman places her hand over one ear, but holds aloft her phone in the other, ready to snap Trump when he emerged.
There was little energy from Trump. He stood rigid, almost defying the amped up music. All the energy comes from the crowd. He walked a few steps ... then stopped and just stood there. I recorded him standing in a single spot for nearly a minute barely moving. He took a few more steps, waved, and repeated. He did this for maybe five minutes.
Clearly tired, his voice had an obvious croak, and who can blame him - he spoke to us for more than an hour, having only hours earlier wrapped up a 90-minute speech in Virginia.
Trump is far from the first politician to hold a rally. He’s far from the best speaker - in fact, he may be one of the worst, but Trump’s rallies, like Trump himself, have become one of the defining political products of our lifetime. For nine years since he came down the gold escalator in Trump Tower, the political conversation around the world has been transfixed by what has gone on at these rallies. Trump himself recognises this convinced he’ll win and constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, he strikes an elegiac tone saying the crowd is witnessing some of the last-ever Trump campaign rallies. No one will repeat them, Trump thinks, the rallies will disappear after him, “never to happen again”.
I must say, I’m unconvinced by the hype. Trump speaks in a verbal snakes and ladders of free association. He’ll start with one topic, climb to another one, then another one, before sliding back to the first topic again. He strings together minute upon minute of one-liners, a bit like the banter at the beginning of a podcast, only with Trump it can last for an hour.
Then there are the incredible claims.
“I will end inflation I will stop the massive invasion,” he said, before promising to usher in the “four greatest years in the history of our country”.
He talks about the size of the crowd (which, to be fair to Trump, is large) and then about “crooked Hillary Clinton” a favourite line from eight years ago.
“[Hillary Clinton] was and is a smart woman and she lies like hell. Kamala Harris also lies but not as much as Hillary,” he said.
Some of it’s funny enough to merit a chuckle. There’s something funny about the grudge he holds against Clinton, despite the fact he actually beat her. Of President Joe Biden, who has largely disappeared from view as his presidency enters its twilight, Trump jests, “where’s Biden what the hell happened to that guy?”
A sign saying “Trump Will Fix It” falls off the wall. A group of about three men spend about half an hour trying to reattach it before giving up and resting the sign on a row of empty seats.
Perhaps anticipating what many journalists would likely write about the speech, Trump Sid, defensively, “I’m not ramblin’ - it’s genius okay? How many people can do four of these in one day?”
Thinking a win was on the way, he spoke, almost in elegy, that these rallies, which will end on Monday, are “never to happen again”. Planning to win, and constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, he might be right. Perhaps we really are seeing the end of the Trump rally.
The crowd loves it. A man at my hotel said Trump was “so funny” and loved the fact Trump had acknowledged a joke he’d yelled from the stands. The crowd are unfailingly polite individually, but rather terrifying in aggregate. They loved a New Zealand accent, helped me find my way around the enormous coliseum complex, and were frankly quite good company for the several hours I was waiting in line with them.
Together, however, they became possessed by an almost primal collective rage. The four hours I was in the auditorium were punctuated by interjections I’d only ever heard at events like the occupation of Parliament in 2022, another occasion in which well-meaning individuals transformed into a menacing, violent collective and back again.
“F*** off hoe!”, was one interjection directed at Harris, “kill her!”, was another. Another interjection, positively acknowledged by Trump from the podium, suggested Harris was a prostitute.
One could sift three obvious themes from the mess, the first, is to stoke fears the election may be stolen from Trump. None of the Trump supporters I interviewed, from my Uber driver to members of the crowd camped outside the Coliseum, believe Trump lost the 2020 election, choosing to believe one of the many conspiracy theories claiming he won.
Trump’s campaign and his social media surrogates have been making noises in several swing states, primarily Pennsylvania and Arizona about the conduct of the election. Local media are reporting fears this could be laying the groundwork for a wave of litigation following polling day. Hardly any of the dozens of people I’ve interviewed since arriving here think the election will deliver a conclusive result on November 5. Most are resigned to tedious months of litigation before someone is inaugurated president on January 20.
Trump is urging supporters to “swamp the vote” by which he means turning out in such great numbers the Democrats cannot steal the election. Should Trump lose, the “swamp the vote” strategy will likely form yet another node in the web of conspiracy building Trump will spin to explain why yet another election was stolen from him.
The second is that the speech was incredibly defensive. He spent a good portion of the speech discussing women’s rights, abortion, and Project 2025 (a blueprint for dismantling many parts of the American state, which the Harris campaign argues is a de facto manifesto for Trump’s second term). Abortion is everywhere this election - and it is a losing issue for Trump, who appointed the Supreme Court Justices responsible for overturning the precedent that established the federal right to an abortion.
The issue has ballooned into a broader discussion about fertility treatment and women’s health, which, unsurprisingly, Trump thinks himself to be the world’s greatest champion.
“I consider myself to be the father of fertilisation,” he said at the rally.
The final theme showed Trump going on the offensive. Immigration consistently polls as one of the top issues of the election. It’s an issue on which Harris is weak, having been appointed the Biden Administration’s voter Tsar at a time when illegal crossings exploded. By any measure, the number of migrants entering the US illegally is high, and it’s putting pressure on services, and there have been instances where men in the US illegally have committed violent crimes.
“The United States is now an occupied country,” Trump told the crowd.
“In Aurora, Colorado Venezuelan gangs have taken over whole apartment buildings - in other words they’re in the real estate business,” like me.
“The day I take the oath of office the migrant invasion ends,” he said, adding he wants to see the death penalty for any illegal immigrant who murders an American.
I get an Uber from the rally to the Greyhound bus, which will take me back north. She’s the first person I’ve met in North Carolina who isn’t voting for Trump. She’s been to Trump rallies and Harris rallies (they’re everywhere in North Carolina) and thinks she’s sized up both candidates. The fact Trump is a convicted felon tipped her over the edge.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018. His travel to the United States was assisted by the US Embassy in Wellington.
Christopher Luxon has now acknowledged it was an issue addressed by Cabinet.