By the time Donald Trump took to the stage for his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, some of his most ardent supporters had spent the night in their cars amid frigid temperatures to see the man they hope to once again elect as president.
\nAs Lee Greenwood\u2019s \u201cGod Bless the U.S.A.\u201d pumped from the speakers inside the convention center, the Republican former president-turned-candidate waved, swayed, clapped and blew kisses.
\n\u201cTrump, Trump, Trump,\u201d some in the crowd of 3,200 people chanted. A young couple held their baby aloft. A few people got teary.
\nTrump\u2019s rallies are a defining feature of his presidential campaigns: all-day spectacles blending evangelical revivalist meeting and carnival, designed to deliver an emotional experience to his base and bring new backers into the fold, his campaign said.
\nIn Trump\u2019s third presidential campaign, a general election rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden on Nov. 5, the meticulously planned marathons have re-emerged as a central part of Trump\u2019s bid to re-enter the White House.
\nThe former reality TV star is intimately involved in the \u201clook, feel and tone\u201d of the rallies, including the music, selected from the personal playlist that Trump listens to during down time at his Mar-a-Lago Florida estate, said Justin Caporale, deputy campaign manager for operations.
\n\u201cWe are essentially producing rock concerts inside of a week, and we\u2019re doing it multiple times a month,\u201d Caporale said.
\nTrump has held 21 campaign rallies so far in 2024, including 11 in Iowa and New Hampshire during the Republican nominating presidential race, according to Election Central, a non-partisan group that tracks public appearances by presidential candidates.
\nThat compares to 13 by mid-April in 2020, when he was president, according to a Reuters analysis.
\nBiden\u2019s re-election campaign has largely bypassed big rallies for smaller meetings with voters at venues such as churches and union halls.
\nTrump\u2019s rally schedule this cycle has had to compete with his court appearances on criminal and civil charges. He spent this past week in a New York courtroom for the start of his hush money criminal trial, before heading to swing state North Carolina for a rally on Saturday.
\nReuters attended Trump\u2019s Green Bay rally on April 2 and interviewed four dozen attendees who collectively liked going to the rallies, they said, because it felt like a community and they didn\u2019t have to worry about being politically correct. They said they came because they love Trump and his rallies are fun.
\nThe news agency also spoke to two campaign officials, including Caporale, who described the strategy and stagecraft that go into creating an experience designed to excite the base and imbue a sense of belonging that bonds supporters to Trump and his populist message, with the aim of propelling him to a second term.
\n\u201cThese are people that are activists in our movement. They want the same thing we want \u2013 to get President Trump elected for the next four years,\u201d said Brian Hughes, a senior campaign adviser.
\nSPECTATORS
\nSharon Anderson, 68, drove five hours from her home in Tennessee to Indiana to meet up with fellow Trump supporter Mike Boatman, 56, before the two drove another eight hours to Wisconsin.
\nThey slept in their rental car outside the convention center to ensure they would be at the front of the line.
\nAnderson and Boatman are part of a group that calls itself the \u201cFront Row Joes,\u201d about 50 Trump supporters by their count, who they said take turns to be first in line for every Trump rally.
\nThis was Boatman\u2019s 85th rally and Anderson\u2019s 51st. In North Carolina in March 2020, Trump\u2019s son Eric pulled Anderson on stage so she could tell the crowd of 20,000 why she loved the then-president.
\n\u201cThis is like family,\u201d Anderson, a retired high school attendance clerk, said before the Green Bay rally. \u201cYou make new friends from all over the country. At every Trump rally you leave with hope for our future.\u201d
\nAs supporters waited for the doors to open, Duane Schwingel, 65, a Trump superfan wearing Uncle Sam regalia and carrying a microphone and boom box, sang songs extolling Trump and decrying socialists.
\nWisconsin resident Vicki Lou Hanegraaf, 62, who was attending her first rally, said she expected the emotions she felt watching Trump walk across the White House lawn as president to swell up again. \u201cTrump is a truth slayer,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s anointed with absolute truth, like gravity.\u201d
\nSTRATEGY
\nThe Trump campaign uses the rallies to collect and analyze attendee data, in the hope of turning it into votes. People register with the campaign, providing email, cell phone number, zip code and state, in return for a text message which serves as a ticket.
\nAfter the rally, attendees are flooded with text messages, including fundraising appeals from Trump.
\nThe rallies are also aimed at attracting free local and national media coverage, recruiting volunteers and getting local politicians and leaders to amplify Trump\u2019s message, Hughes said.
\nAs the campaign heats up, an increasing number of Trump\u2019s rallies will be held in election battleground states like Wisconsin, Hughes said. Trump narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016, then narrowly lost it to Biden in 2020.
\nSTAGECRAFT
\nThe Green Bay event had been weeks in the making.
\nTrump\u2019s advance team coordinated with the Secret Service and local law enforcement agencies to secure the convention center.
\nThey spent days working out parking for supporters, food trucks, access to restrooms, water, merchandise and entertainment.
\nLocal contractors and volunteers helped decorate the stage with giant screens, red carpet and American flags.
\nAs supporters streamed inside, campaign volunteers handed out \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d and \u201cFire Biden\u201d signs.
\nTrump\u2019s musical choices played over the loudspeakers: Elvis Presley\u2019s \u201cSuspicious Minds,\u201d Jerry Lee Lewis\u2019s \u201cGreat Balls of Fire,\u201d The Who\u2019s \u201cPinball Wizard,\u201d along with the Village People\u2019s \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d, and \u201cThe Music of the Night\u201d from The Phantom of the Opera.
\nCaporale said the Trump campaign has worked hard to refine and improve \u201can incredible and unique guest experience.\u201d
\nAfter each rally, Trump\u2019s team holds a post-mortem to discuss what worked and what should be improved for the next event.
\nSome of the stunts this year have been audacious.
\nAs Trump\u2019s Boeing 757 private jet came in to land for a rally at the Dayton International Airport in Ohio on March 16, a voice announced: \u201cTrump Force One, you are cleared for landing.\u201d
\nThe theme music from the \u201cTop Gun\u201d movies struck up. The crowd went wild.
\nWhile the stagecraft is designed to entertain the crowd, it also reinforces Trump\u2019s message that the country has gone to \u201chell\u201d and that he along with his supporters must fix it.
\nAbout two hours before Trump appeared on stage in Green Bay, speakers began whipping up the audience.
\nMike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, repeated the baseless conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
\nTom Tiffany, a Wisconsin congressman, said Biden had given the country a \u201cVIP program for illegal aliens, and you are the second-class citizens in America now, aren\u2019t you?\u201d
\nThe event also struck a religious tone. During the invocation, Casey Carey, the pastor at CrossPoint Church in DePere, Wisconsin, said: \u201cI ask you Father to bless President Donald Trump.\u201d
\nThe crowd yelled \u201cAmen!\u201d
\nSPEECH
\nTrump began the speech suggesting he, not Biden, won Wisconsin in 2020 and repeated in his address the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
\nAs the speech gathered in fury about the sorry state of America and the dark forces arrayed against Trump, it began to mimic a religious call-and-response session between a pastor and congregation.
\nHe directed his harshest rhetoric towards immigrants in the country illegally from nations including Venezuela, the Congo, Somalia and Syria.
\nThe crowd chanted: \u201cBuild the wall!\u201d
\nHe promised to carry out the \u201clargest deportation in American history\u201d.
\nThe crowd roared.
\nJennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M University professor who has written a book on Trump\u2019s rhetoric, said the exchanges represented mutual pledges of loyalty and protection: the crowd willing to suffer for Trump because they believe he suffers for them, and staying loyal to Trump because he is loyal to them.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a potent combination,\u201d she said, in terms of reaffirming the connection.
\nThe Green Bay speech ran just about an hour, shorter than usual because Trump needed to fly out before being snowed in.
\nTrump stayed away from some of the more incendiary language he\u2019s used at previous rallies.
\nHe was at times funny. But the bulk of his speech featured dystopian language, with Trump painting a picture of an America locked in a battle of good versus evil.
\n\u201c2024 is our final battle,\u201d Trump said as the speech was winding up. \u201cWith you at my side, we will demolish the deep state, we will expel the warmongers, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.\u201d
\nThen he exited the stage to a Sam & Dave song \u2013 an R&B classic that is a new entrant to the Trump rally playlist.
\n(Reuters)rallies. rallies, Trump campaign, emotional experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump held a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where some of his supporters camped out overnight in their cars to see him. Trump’s rallies are a key feature of his campaign, designed to create an emotional experience for his base and attract new supporters. The rallies are meticulously planned and Trump is involved in every detail, including the music. Attendees register with the campaign to attend the rallies, which are also used to collect data, attract media coverage, and recruit volunteers. The rallies are held in battleground states like Wisconsin, where Trump narrowly lost to Biden in 2020. The events are carefully stagecrafted to entertain the crowd and reinforce Trump’s message that the country needs to be fixed. During the rally, Trump repeated false claims about the 2020 election being stolen and made promises about deportations and building a wall. The speech had a religious tone and included pledges of loyalty and protection between Trump and his supporters. The rally ended with Trump exiting the stage to an R&B song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1521,6552,1414,6393,4940,3346,2699,492,1612,209,4039,1221,4422,1107,2339,1664,3894,233,2460,1404,269,2458,1918,932,3431,2369,6092,166,1600,7255,207,6117,3343,2459,121,118,4382,4085,4081,1957,985,658,4407,6072,187,756,2121,5679,4882,3940,148,387,1394,2952,1346,2257,4442,2628,1277,699,393,3331,4843,1670,6516,1356,4448,7253,1400,2342,4122,6468,1022,433,4441,2813,2471,443,4227,3825,618,1906,965,841,7254,198,1379,962,457,165,6305,18],"class_list":["post-8988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-1521","tag-access","tag-airport","tag-analysis","tag-attendees","tag-baby","tag-battleground-states","tag-biden","tag-boeing","tag-box","tag-building","tag-campaign","tag-candidates","tag-car","tag-carnival","tag-cars","tag-charges","tag-church","tag-community","tag-concerts","tag-congo","tag-connection","tag-conspiracy","tag-court","tag-criminal-trial","tag-data","tag-deportation","tag-donald-trump","tag-election","tag-emotional-experience","tag-entertainment","tag-event","tag-events","tag-family","tag-featured","tag-fire","tag-food","tag-fundraising","tag-future","tag-general-election","tag-gun","tag-history","tag-hope","tag-immigrants","tag-international","tag-joe-biden","tag-land","tag-law","tag-law-enforcement","tag-leaders","tag-local","tag-lost","tag-man","tag-media","tag-meeting","tag-meetings","tag-message","tag-money","tag-movies","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-news","tag-president","tag-president-joe-biden","tag-presidential-campaign","tag-presidential-election","tag-protection","tag-rallies","tag-rally","tag-re-election","tag-re-election-campaign","tag-rental","tag-republican","tag-school","tag-service","tag-somalia","tag-syria","tag-temperatures","tag-tennessee","tag-text-messages","tag-top","tag-trial","tag-trucks","tag-trump","tag-trump-campaign","tag-venezuela","tag-voters","tag-water","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-who","tag-world"],"acf":{"keyphrase":"","keywords":"","sourceimg":"","country-category":""},"yoast_head":"\n