Like the line that snaked through a Norcross parking lot hours before his speech on Saturday, there is no end in sight for the Donald Trump campaign.
“I love this,” the Republican presidential hopeful told about 7,700 screaming fans who packed the North Atlanta Trade Center. “I love the people. I love the country. We’re never ever getting out of this deal — never ever. …
“We’ll take it to Cleveland where they have the (GOP) convention. And afterwards we’re going to beat Hillary (Clinton) or whoever it is so bad — so bad.”
The bravado spoke to those who arrived at 6 a.m. to be at the front of the line for his noon speech.
“Respect, that’s the whole key,” said Wanda Hughes of McDonough. “Nobody in the world respects America right now.”
Hughes said her husband registered to vote for the first time at the age of 60 to cast his ballot for Trump next year, and he is seeking the fashion accessory of the season: a Make America Great Again hat.
There were plenty of them on display Saturday for the billionaire showman, making his first Georgia stop of the campaign. His brief visit to the area included a meeting with about 40 African-American pastors who had flown in from around the country.
Trump has stumbled at times on questions of religion – crucial for a faith-driven grassroots Republican electorate — but he played up his churchgoing roots for the occasion.
“I’m Presbyterian,” he told reporters in front of the pastors. He later called his former minister and “The Power of Positive Thinking” author Norman Vincent Peale “one of the greatest – I mean, I hated to leave church.”
Trump used his hour-long speech to boast his high poll numbers and roast his rivals. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is “low energy,” he said. Businesswoman Carly Fiorina was called the “worst CEO in history.”
Trump described a scene in which Florida Sen. Marco Rubio meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“A guy walks in and he’s so drenched in sweat: ‘Hello, hello. Do you have any water?’” Trump said of Rubio, to laughs. “This is not exactly a poker player, folks.”
While vowing never to leave the race, he forecast tough times ahead. The attack ads are coming, Trump said, from rival campaigns and Super PACs.
“Remember, it’s a phony deal,” he said.
The “distortions,” he added, also come from the media. The crowd obliged him by booing the assembled network television cameras.
Of course, the media have greatly abetted his rise to the top of the field. Trump said he had budgeted $20 million to spend on television ads at this point, but has not had to spend a dime because members of the news media have covered him so heavily.
“When you have a show and the show is Trump and you have an ad that’s Trump, they OD on Trump,” he said at a news conference.
He asked the crowd rhetorically if he should accept big money from lobbyists and others who are offering it. “It’s not like me,” he said, to turn down money. The expected, unified chorus of “noooooooo” from the crowd spoke to a sentiment felt in the line outside — that by self-funding, Trump is not beholden to anyone.
The Trump pitch describes a shrunken nation at home and abroad, run by “stupid” and “incompetent” leaders. Trump vows to create jobs by renegotiating trade deals that have led to outsourcing, while building a massive wall on the Mexican border that he will make Mexico pay for.
“I want it to be good-looking because some day they’re going to name it after me: the Trump Wall,” he said.
The bravado extends to crowd estimates. Event staff told reporters the crowd was at capacity of 7,700, but they did not shut people out.
A peek outside as the event got underway showed no one waiting to get in. Yet Trump declared “there are so many people outside (that) can’t get in.”
They had lined up hours earlier, drawn by Trump’s moxie and his outspokenness against illegal immigration and free trade deals.
“I just feel like he’s a businessman and he needs to run the country like a business,” said Karen Williams of Grayson.
A handful in the crowd did not come to praise him.
Teenagers Yu Jin Kim and Sara Park – who said they supported Democrat Bernie Sanders — took off their shirts (but not undergarments) midway through the speech in protest of Trump’s approach to immigrants. One wrote “Legal immigrant, offense taken” on her chest; the other had an obscenity aimed at Trump.
While Trump still leads, Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson – who was scheduled to sign books Saturday in Lawrenceville and will appear Sunday morning in Gainesville – also have climbed in the polls for the Republican nomination. None of the three have held elective office.
“I think we’ve reached a point where everyone’s so tired of the political BS that we just want somebody who’s not like that,” said Jason Brown, 18, of Loganville.
Four years ago, there was a different outsider businessman atop the GOP polls. Herman Cain, now a host at News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB (which, like the AJC, is part of Cox Media Group), spoke at Saturday’s rally, offering broad praise for the “outsider” candidates in the field, without specifically endorsing Trump.
He said those who challenge the Republican “establishment” are often labeled “crazies.”
“The more I see that kind of crazy,” Cain said, “the more I like crazy.”
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