As soon as the cornfields cleared, they were waving, hands and flags, in fours and fives, then in lines, small and substantial, with their Make America Great Again caps. The rubberneckers were overwhelmingly white, in shorts and flip-flops, beckoning their saviour like it was Palm Sunday. Little children stood to attention and saluted as the motorcade rolled in – the wrong one, the first arrival in Wapakoneta on Sunday was Scott Morrison, not Donald Trump – but the people didn’t know and I doubt they cared.

The welcoming party was all Trump love, except for two brave souls, down near the railway line near the entrance to Anthony Pratt’s Ohio box factory, clutching a sign that read: “Thank you, Obama and Australia, for jobs.”

Inside the gates of Pratt Paper Ohio, where we were going for ceremonial business, having finished the Washington leg of Morrison’s visit, the crowd swelled. Trump folks don’t like the media but perhaps our Australian accents made the visitors acceptable, although the teeth remained politely gritted.

Morrison insists Australia will not be drawn into military conflict with Iran Read more

Bruce and Clara Zwiebel arrived early to secure a good position. They are prosperous and retired, lifelong residents of Wapakoneta, and Trump people. “We like what he’s doing,” Clara said, still suspicious of me and my digital recorder, as if it might put words in her mouth. “He’s not a typical politician,” she persisted.

“He grew up not being a politician. He’s doing this job because he’s well off – that proves he cares about the country. He’s trustworthy, what he’s doing, how he’s doing it.”

Bruce had the last word. “There is no way a Democrat is going to beat him.”

Pratt, the Australian billionaire box maker with a ginger coiffure as flamboyant as Trump’s, has cultivated Republicans, and Trump in particular, with cloying full-page advertisements in the Wall Street Journal.

Trump only likes one trade story – the one where America wins.

So that’s the story Australia is giving him on this visit: the one where Australia makes America great again, one box plant at a time, in the red states in the midwest of the country.

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In this story, which has been crafted down to the footnotes, Trump people get jobs and feel better about themselves and their country, and re-elect the president in 2020, whether the New York Times likes him or not.

Sunday was a virtuous circle of tyre-pumping. “Anthony,” Trump reported, “was the most successful man in Australia.” Before anyone could shout out factcheck please, in aisle three Pratt reciprocated.

He wouldn’t have made the investment ($1.9bn across all of Visy’s US operations – the business is called Pratt Industries in this country) if it weren’t for Trump occupying the White House.

The economics of Pratt’s paper recycling business is favourable in America. He can produce a top-quality product at a good price because there’s not much competition in his market niche. Presumably that’s what’s behind the expansion but the diplomacy required a more devotional pitch. I did this for you Donald, was Pratt’s message, and the message was received.

Then the path of mutual reinforcement led back to Scott Morrison and Australia. Pratt dubbed Morrison the “Don Bradman of Australian job creation”. Cricket’s Babe Ruth. (“Oh, cricket,” Trump said, not that scintillated but happy to play along. “Sounds pretty good.”)

Trump informed the crowd Morrison had won the Australian election – Morrison “blew ’em away” against establishment predictions, against the odds, because he believed in the same things The Donald did. The crowd, instructed to have warm feelings towards the visiting Aussie, and inclined to approve of against-trend victors, then cheered obligingly.

Morrison toasts 'unconventional' Trump – but Hillsong pastor reportedly rejected from guest list Read more

Trump people have an emotional reaction to their president. It is visceral, like nothing I’ve ever seen from Australian voters to a politician in two decades of reporting.

Perhaps it was like this in Australia when Gough Whitlam, a political disruptor of a different type, won in 1972, I don’t know, but these people are activated by emotion, not by pragmatism or cool calculation.

Trump switches them on when he enters their orbit. The music pounds (in Wapakoneta it was initially the Village People, Macho Man); he keeps them waiting to build the anticipation, wanting his entrance to be a perfect electrification point.

When Trump took the stage, a woman swooned in front of me, keeling over on the concrete – possibly it was the heat, which was oppressive – but it’s equally possible it was a surfeit of emotion. A secret service agent went to her rescue but she waved at him, a querulous sort of rebuke, attempting to recover herself.

Trump, who is now in full presidential campaign mode, loquacious, expansive, combative, relentless, and dangerous – told the flyover states crowd he was changing the slogan from Make America Great Again to Keep America Great. Call it the 2020 pivot.

They could keep the Maga hats, he told them, that iconography would always be special, but it was time, he thought, to acknowledge the central achievement of his presidency: job creation.

He told the crowd they were no longer “forgotten people” (Robert Menzies would approve) and he was restoring the might of American manufacturing.

It didn’t matter that this plant was, in fact, Australian manufacturing. When the deal is billionaire to billionaire, these are minor details. Nobody needs to alert the stock exchange.

This was an era, the president told the crowd, where America would be raised up in partnership with countries like Australia, countries that upheld and respected “fair and reciprocal trade”.

Morrison knew he had a tough act to follow. Trump can say whatever the hell he likes. Morrison still plays by the rules, occupying a universe where people fact-check what prime ministers say, and it has a minor impact. He hasn’t sought to create his own truth in the prime ministership. But despite having different rules of the road, the Australian prime minister did well enough.

Wakaponeta’s most famous son is Neil Armstrong, the man who walked on the moon. Morrison said Trump had delivered the lowest unemployment rate since Armstrong made his famous journey, and the town that produced the astronaut roared at the honour.

Trump returned the favour. Australia, under Morrison, was “greater than ever before”. It didn’t matter whether or not this was true – it was resonant.

The music was cued and You Can’t Always Get What You Want blared out of the speakers, and the people tumbled out into the sunset.

The evening air was heavy and there was an unpleasant smell – fertiliser perhaps, something mildly awful.

No one cared. They fell over one another and held their iPhones high as the presidential motorcade roared past, across the flat plains, past the water towers and the red barns and the billboards telling the damned of America to Repent and Follow the Word of Jesus Christ, into the gathering darkness.