DALLAS — Donning a camouflage Trump baseball cap and Trump-Pence 2020 sneakers, Ronnie Drury arrived nearly 12 hours early to hear President Donald Trump speak Thursday evening at a reelection rally in Dallas.

“This is the biggest thing on my bucket list, and I’m checking it off,” he said.

For Drury, of Plano, the draw wasn’t hearing Trump discuss any particular policy issue but receiving affirmation on his staunch beliefs toward Social Security and immigration policy. “They can’t live off of you and I’s benefits,” Drury said of migrants entering through the U.S.-Mexico border. “They have to work just like everybody else does.”

The president didn’t disappoint.

“We’re building a great wall along the southern border,” Trump said as raucous cheers of “build a wall” radiated from the brimming crowd. “It is going up rapidly, we are building that sucker right now, and it is having a tremendous effect.”

Trump also drew praise from the crowd as he took aim at Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 2020 presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke and Joe Biden, Biden’s son Hunter (some in the crowd derisively referred to him as “Cokehead Biden”), and former President Barack Obama.

“I really don’t believe they love our country,” Trump said, also referring to Democrats as “corrupt people.”

National headlines Thursday would suggest the president was having a rough day. Just hours before, his acting chief of staff admitted, then tried to walk back, that the president used military aid as leverage to pressure Ukraine into a political investigation. Hours later, Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced he was resigning at the end of the year. But Trump and his supporters were unfazed, eager to embrace the rally as a sort of therapeutic escape.

For the thousands of faithful supporters who found themselves at Thursday evening’s rally, the night was more than a political spectacle. Attendees donned bright red, white and blue garments adorned with buttons and carried signs insisting they were neither racist nor stupid. Trump strode onstage nearly an hour after he was slated to speak, but the audience paid no mind. Energized by a pump-up playlist that included Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Elton John, attendees waved their hands in the air, paraded blue and red “Trump-Pence” signs, and cheered and booed on cue with those who warmed up the crowd.

In talks with more than a dozen Trump supporters before and after the rally, the message was clear. Their support for Trump was steeped in two main beliefs: He’s done exactly “what he said he’d do,” and his remarks toward Democrats and people of color matched what they said and believed.

“He talks like me. He thinks like me,” said Patrick Stevenson, 34, of Arlington. “He can talk like a normal person, which is weird because the guy is a flippin’ billionaire. He’s just like a regular cab driver dude.”

Stevenson, who said he voted for Obama in 2008 because “he was black and we needed change,” didn’t fully embrace the Republican ideology until he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 under the Obama administration. He said he noticed a change in policy on the ground that led him to develop a callous attitude toward the military and the government.

Then Trump entered the 2016 presidential race.

“This orange guy gets on the TV and starts campaigning, you know, and it just hits home,” he said. “I’m like, ‘You know what, this guy gets me.’”