Is this the most dangerous campaign in history, or a surreal comedy act, playing to a crowd laughing too hard to listen? The US writer spends a day at a presidential rally

I spent five hours at the Donald Trump rally in Sacramento, California, on 1 June. I spoke to and overheard dozens of the rally’s attendees, not as a journalist but as one ticketholder to another – I was dressed in jeans, workboots and wore a Nascar hat – and found every last one of the attendees to be genial, polite and, with a few notable exceptions, their opinions to be within the realm of reasonable. The rally was as peaceful and patriotic as a Fourth of July picnic.

And yet I came away with a host of new questions and concerns. Among them: why is it that the song Trump’s campaign uses to mark his arrival and departure is Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer?” Is it more troubling, or less troubling, knowing that no one in the audience really cares what he says? And could it be that because Trump’s supporters are not all drawn from the lunatic fringe, but in fact represent a broad cross-section of regular people, and far more women than would seem possible or rational, that he could actually win?

***

It was a sweltering 95 degrees, the sky blue and sun punishing, when I pulled off the highway and, guided by a well-planned and orderly array of cops and cones and sirens, made my way to a peripheral part of the Sacramento airport, where the Trump rally would be held, in an empty hangar.

It was just before four o’clock in the afternoon, and the rally wouldn’t start until seven, but already the lot was crowded with cars and trucks – not all of them American-made. When I parked, I glanced at the car next to me, and found that a young couple in casual business attire was engaged in casual amorous activity. Seeing my car arrive, the woman straightened her skirt and the man removed his hand from under her bra, but otherwise they continued undeterred.

It was the first, but not the last time, that it was clear that a good portion of the audience saw the rally as not purely a political event, but as something else, too – an entertainment, a curiosity, an opportunity to sell merchandise and refreshments, a chance to do some late-afternoon groping in the parking lot.

Like a lot of comedy, the appeal is in the forbidden delight. We can’t believe someone said that, on stage, to so many

For a year now, I’ve been watching the Trump candidacy the same way the rest of the world and at least half of the American population has – first as a harmless sideshow, then as a worrisome sideshow, then as an increasingly surreal and dangerous sideshow, and finally as a terrifying looming nightmare with echoes of Mussolini, Joseph McCarthy, Kristallnacht and Hitler. News reports and isolated video clips have made Trump’s rallies seem like bacchanalian proto-fascist white power orgies, fuelled by bald racism, pseudo-Nazi salutes and the imminent threat of violence toward any detractors. For months now I’ve believed that Trump’s candidacy was the most dangerous presidential campaign in modern American history. But the reality of a Trump rally, or at least this Trump rally, was about as threatening as a Garth Brooks concert.

Tickets to all Trump rallies are free and are available to anyone; you simply print one from Trump’s website and bring it with you. I chose not to go to the rally as a card-carrying member of the media, given at this point – and this truth was borne out repeatedly over the course of the day – Trump supporters, like Trump himself, are exceedingly distrustful of the media. If I had a notebook or microphone out, asking questions, the answers would be guarded or rehearsed, if anyone spoke to me at all. Instead, I decided I’d stand in line with everyone else, knowing that the six or seven people around me would be my window into at least a small portion of the Trump supporter’s mentality. I took my place at the back of the orderly line.

“See that?” the man in front of me said. He was pointing to a jet’s white trail in the sky above us. “That’s the air force. They’re spraying shit in the sky.”

I’ll call this man Jim. He was about 6ft tall, beer-bellied, and wearing shorts and a yellow T-shirt with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” printed above a rattlesnake. His hair and moustache were rust-coloured, his eyes small and wary.

Over the next 90 minutes, as we stood and occasionally shuffled toward the hangar together, Jim offered his theories on a variety of government and corporate conspiracies. This first one involved the air force releasing a toxic mixture of chemicals into the atmosphere, which he claimed they had been doing for 30 years. “They’re manipulating the weather with technology,” he said, “and they call it climate change. But really they’re changing the climate with technology.” He pointed to a wash of cirrus clouds high in the western sky. “See those fake-ass clouds? They use them to block out the sun. That’s why we don’t have springtime any more.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Dave Eggers

By quoting Jim, I realise I’ve made him sound nuts. But Jim wasn’t all that nuts. His theories were occasionally bizarre, but he expressed them calmly, and to everyone in line he was gregarious and kind. He laughed at appropriate moments. He was friendly and generous, repeatedly buying water for people around him, expressing interest in people, doing normal-people things. Later in this piece, I’ll quote Jim again, and again he’ll sound nuts, but all I can say here is that when you spend 90 minutes next to someone, you can gauge their level of loony, and Jim was merely a low-grade crank – not unlike that certain uncle in any family who’s fun to be around but who holds strange views about, say, water fluoridation.

Jim had strange views about water fluoridation. Because it was 95 degrees and sunny, and because we were standing in a shadeless parking lot in the height of the afternoon, vendors selling bottled water were doing a brisk business. When one approached us, pulling his wares in a red wagon, Jim asked if the water had come from Nestlé. The vendor looked at one of the bottles he was selling and seemed relieved that they weren’t Nestlé. Jim bought two.

“Don’t buy Nestlé shit, it’s got fluoride in it,” Jim said to me, handing me a bottle.

I tried to pay, but Jim wouldn’t have it. I asked him why Nestlé would put fluoride in their bottled water.

“Trying to dumb us down so we don’t vote for Trump,” he said, only half-joking. “Do you know history? Hitler started it.”

I asked why Hitler had put fluoride in the water. I had no idea how long we’d be in line, so there was time to kill.

“To dumb down the people,” Jim said. “Make them lethargic.” Now Jim looked into the sky again, at the trails of the passing jets. “Then they spray the shit in the sky. Double whammy. They’re actually spraying that with our air force. I wish they were still serving their country, but … ” He sighed and took a pull on his fluoride-free H 2 0.

In the background, the soundtrack was provided by a man named Kraig Moss, a very kind and gentle older man with a guitar and a terrible story to tell. He was dressed like a cowboy, in jeans, boots, a denim vest and a worn-out hat, and had planted a small sound system on the lot, connected to a microphone. Moss has followed Trump’s rallies around the country, playing songs he has written, all of them available on a CD he was selling called Donald Trump for President.

“My name is Kraig Moss,” he said into the microphone, talking over a recording of one of his songs, “Trump Train”. “I’m from Oswego, New York. I wrote this song and many others that are on this CD. On 6 January 2014 I lost my son to a heroin-fentanyl overdose. That was in Oswego. And I talk to the kids about the ongoing heroin epidemic. How available it is. And how important it is to stay away. I’m supporting myself out here. I’m not independently wealthy. I don’t get any help from the campaign. I just come to get the folks riled up. Talk to ’em, play a little music, and then on to the next rally. I been to 33 of ’em.”

I bought two CDs from Kraig and I gave one to Jim. The songs were country songs, with titles including “Save Our Nation”, “Americans Will Win”, “Trump Chant Short” and “Trump Chant Long”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kraig Moss. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

In front of me and Jim was a family of three. The mother, who I’ll call Belinda, was black-haired, about 40, diminutive and youthful looking, wearing a white tank top, huge black sunglasses and a pink baseball hat. Her daughter, a taller, younger version of herself, was dressed much the same, while her son, who was much taller, well over 6ft, wore a tank top and a straight-brimmed baseball cap. They were quiet much of the time, the teenagers politely enduring the more or less incessant monologuing of Jim and another soapboxer, who I’ll call Ron.

More so than any other attendee I encountered at the rally, Ron embodied the Trump voter we have come to expect. He was middle-aged and white. He wore a white Trump T-shirt, crisp and new, tucked into blue jeans that looked like they’d been ironed that morning. He wore workboots and mirrored sunglasses and was fit for his age, with the bearing of a gym teacher or ex-Marine.

Ron preferred to stand a few yards off the orderly line, like a general inspecting his troops. With his arms crossed in front of him, facing the back of the line, at first I thought he was from the Trump campaign, tasked with examining the attendees and ferreting out spies. But soon enough it was clear he was just a man who liked an audience, and for much of the next hour, whenever Jim wasn’t talking about chem trails and fluoridation, Ron held court, facing Jim, Belinda, her kids and me, as if we were paying customers he was obligated to entertain and educate.

“Have you read his books?” Ron asked Belinda, meaning the many books with Trump’s name on them, ghostwritten by others.

Belinda shook her head, no. “I just follow him on Twitter,” she said.

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“I read his books years ago and always loved the guy,” Ron said. “I always wished he would run. His books are all easy reads. Simple English. Read them and you’ll say ‘Holy guacamole, this guy had a crystal ball!’ He predicted everything – 9/11, everything. Guy’s a freaking genius. He had a 159 IQ when he graduated from college. Imagine what it is now!”

OK. Now, by quoting Ron, I’ve made him out to sound like a lunatic, too. But Ron was not really a lunatic. Ron was likable and sympathetic, given how desperate he was to have a handful of people listen to him talk about his two heroes: Donald J Trump and Ronald Reagan. In his mind, the two men were equally great, cut from the same iconic cloth. Over the course of an hour, I heard Ron tell three different versions of the story of meeting Reagan. The story went something like this:

“Ronald Reagan. I met Ronald Reagan. When I was a kid I was in the Cub Scouts? I was one of a few kids who got to meet him. This was in San Jose. All the Scouts had gathered, and everyone wanted to meet him. All my friends had gone up there to meet him, but I didn’t care to. So, later in the day, my parents said, ‘You gotta go meet this guy. He could be the president one day.’ So I went up, and he had this huge head. And he just sat there and asked me all these questions. He was real interested in me. Just a nice guy. And he had huge hands, too.”

Ron, all these years later, was still moved by, flabbergasted by, the attention Reagan paid to him as a boy. It was frankly touching. More touching still was the visible pleasure Ron displayed in finding out that Belinda was Mexican-American, a fact she offered after a group of protesters walked by yelling “Trump’s a fascist!” One of them was waving a Mexican flag.

“I’m Latina,” Belinda told Ron. “My mother’s from Mexico.” She explained that people are confused about Trump’s attitudes toward Mexico, and that he has more support among Latinos than assumed. She and her mother, she said, were in favour of the wall.

“My friend is Mexican, too,” Ron explained to Belinda and to everyone nearby. “He’s got his citizenship, and he worked on Obama’s campaign in Chicago. Knocking on doors in 10-degree weather. And now he’s on the Trump train. And I got another friend, he’s Muslim, from Afghanistan. I work with him every day because his auto place is next to my business. I get his deliveries for him, and he gets mine. He’s going for Trump, too, and he’s Muslim. So don’t believe the media.”

I should pause here and provide some context. Trump, of course, has promised to build a wall between Mexico and the United States, a project that experts estimate would cost $25bn – though Trump has insisted that he will make Mexico pay for it. At the time of this rally, Trump had recently asserted that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, assigned to a class-action lawsuit against him and Trump University, should be disqualified from the case given his Mexican heritage (Curiel was born in Indiana). Facing a quick backlash, Trump did what he does so brilliantly: he doubled down, stating that he would face prejudicial treatment from a Muslim judge, too. This pair of assertions provoked widespread outrage, including a rebuke from Republican leader Paul Ryan, who called the statements “racist” – a rare use of the word within GOP ranks.

But among our little clique, the discussion of Trump’s non-racist nature continued.

“They say Trump’s a racist and a hater,” Ron said. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Forty years you guys love this guy, and now you say he’s all these things? It don’t add up.”

Trump could say the wall should be built on the Canadian border, and no one would blink

As we’d been waiting, about 500 more people had arrived to stand in line behind us. Vendors moved up and down the line, selling Trump T-shirts, buttons and towels. And all the while, the scene was exceedingly calm. It might have been the heat. It might have been the fluoridation Jim was talking about. But the attendees could have easily been confused with people in line for a Disney ride or a holiday sale at Walmart. They were amiable, polite, dressed in red, white and blue shorts and tank tops and sandals, and surprisingly diverse.

Yes, they were generally white, but there were also African-Americans and plenty of Latinos. A startling number of Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders and South Asian-Americans. There were the expected Harley-Davidson riders in black vests, but there were also a remarkable number of people with disabilities. There were families, professional types, veterans and one Filipino-American navy officer in full dress whites. It was not the homogeneous sea of angry white men that one might have expected. Instead, it appeared to be a skewed but not wholly unrepresentative cross-section of the people of northern California.

Which made some interactions with the protesters feel odd. The demonstrators had every reason to denounce Trump’s past statements, but there seemed to be a wide gulf between the extreme things Trump has said and the more moderate views of the people who came out to this rally. One young man walked by with a bullhorn, followed by a handful of photographers and videographers.

“Trump supporters are assholes and idiots,” the young man hissed.

“Don’t take the bait,” Jim said to Belinda. The young man with the bullhorn repeated his assessment for the next half an hour as he made his way through the parking lot.

“You come up with that all by yourself?” Jim yelled after him.

The line moved on. As we got closer to the hangar, the merchandise tables became more frequent and their purveyors more surprising. A woman speaking heavily accented English and wearing a Service Employees International Union cap sold bright green Trump T-shirts. An older African-American couple were stationed at a table featuring a dozen different Trump shirts, hats and buttons.

“You guys look like Trump voters!” Jim said to them. They laughed and nodded, and asked him if he wanted to buy anything. The T-shirts were $20.

***

When, at about five o’clock, the hangar was finally opened, the line moved swiftly. A few dozen police officers in riot gear stood outside the entrance and manned the metal detectors inside. Large cameras weren’t allowed. No thermoses or breakable water containers were allowed. Posters and banners were not permitted. Trump operatives in well-tailored suits buzzed near the security area, ostensibly looking for security risks and simple troublemakers. Others handed out “Veterans for Trump” placards.

Once we passed through the metal detectors, we were free to move throughout the hangar. The hangar door faced west, and the early evening sun streamed through, casting everything and everyone in silhouette. The crowd milled cheerfully, as they would before a country fair or an outdoor concert, which in many ways the scene resembled. Speakers were set up near the hangar door, and played a succession of songs by musicians – Bruce Springsteen (“Born to Run”), Queen (“Under Pressure” and “Hammer to Fall”), the Rolling Stones (“Start Me Up”) – whose support for Trump might be considered unlikely.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters assemble in the hangar prior to Trump’s arrival at the rally in Sacramento, California, on 1 June. Photograph: Dave Eggers

A few hundred people had already staked out a place against the temporary barrier set up outside, separating the hangar from the tarmac. But most stayed inside, in the shade, and as I moved among them, taking pictures, I noticed another unexpected demographic reality – the audience was at least half women. There were women of all ages, socioeconomic classes and ethnicities. Black women, white women, Indian women, teenagers, preppy women, women dressed as if heading to a party at the beach, women in heels, older women in large groups, one elderly woman in a “Veterans of Foreign Wars” hat. Despite all the things that Trump has said that indicated, or proved, he was at best an unreconstructed chauvinist and at worst a misogynistic and existential threat to the foundational rights of women, his appeal among the women of the Sacramento area was real. And could it be that the song playing as we entered the hangar was Carly Simon’s “No Secrets”? It could. It was.

On the wall of the hangar was an enormous American flag. Below it, a grid of folding chairs had been assembled, set aside for elderly men and women who had served in the armed forces. A veteran in full camouflage, holding himself steady with a wheeled walker, made his way to a seat. Two tidy lines waited to get free water from a series of drinking fountains. As I waited for a drink, I watched an elderly man attempt to take a picture of a bearded man and his young son. The elderly man’s hands were shaking too much to get the shot, so he turned to me. “Can you help?” He gave me the bearded man’s camera and the father and son posed, the son standing in front of the father, the father’s arms around him. They smiled, and I pushed the red button on the smartphone. “I’m sorry,” the elderly man said to me, and to the father. “My hands … ” He walked off, his hands trembling.

A smattering of people had found spots on the floor, sitting in the shade, waiting, fanning themselves with Veterans for Trump placards. It was about 5.30pm now, with Trump’s scheduled speech still over an hour away. I sat down near an Indian-American man, sitting alone, reading a yellowed paperback book. I looked closer. The book was A Passage to India. I swear this is true. Soon a woman sat between the Forster fan and me. She was an African-American woman of about 35, wearing a Trump shirt and passing the time by scrolling through her phone. Her right arm was covered in severe burns.

I opened Kraig Moss’s CD. Inside, there was a picture of a handsome young man with bright blue eyes and a gentle smile. This was Kraig’s son Rob JR Moss. Below the photo there was a message from Kraig. “We all cope with death in different ways. Supporting Mr. Donald J Trump for president and singing to the folks at his rallies has allowed me to talk about my son Rob JR Moss, the tragedy heroin brings to users and their families, along with meeting so many GREAT people along the way. Many who have experienced the same heartbreak I have.”

I sat and watched the crowd move about the hangar. A group of tanned young men in sleeveless shirts and cowboy hats roamed, looking a bit like fashion models on their way to a dude-ranch photo shoot. A young Trump impersonator was meandering through the crowd with a friend, who acted like his handler, helping arrange photos. They were both about 14. Up close, the impersonator’s outfit was shockingly good. In a blue suit and red tie, he looked much as Trump had in the 80s, with his unlined face, his yellow hair, his playground bully’s slouch. Each time he posed for a picture, he leaned back, squinting, his stubby index fingers pointed in the air.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump merchandise. Photograph: Dave Eggers

The vendors in the parking lot had been selling a wide variety of Trump gear, much of it on the extreme end of the messaging scale. One T-shirt featured a pair of boxing gloves dangling together in such a way that they looked like large red testicles. “Finally someone with balls,” the text read. Another featured a cartoon of Trump and Hillary Clinton next to each other. Hillary was attached, like a marionette, to strings held by a large disembodied hand. Next to her, Trump was depicted holding a pair of scissors, having apparently just cut his strings. Also, he is grinning and giving the middle finger to the large hand overhead. There were buttons and shirts that said “Bomb the Hell Out of Isis”. The nastiest button was the one, sold at most of the vendors’ booths, featuring the text:

KFC Hillary Special

Two Fat Thighs

Two Small Breasts

… Left Wing

I mention this because in all the time we stood in line, I saw no one purchasing any of this merchandise, and, once in the hangar, I saw none of it worn by or carried by any of the attendees. Almost without exception, if anyone was wearing any Trump gear at all – and about half of the audience members were – it was of the simple “Trump: Make America Great” variety. The crowd wore this slogan on the signature red hats, they wore it on T-shirts and they carried official campaign placards bearing this message. But the nastier stuff offered outside had gone largely unsold.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The crowd greets Trump’s plane Photograph: Dave Eggers

The mood among the people gathered was so gentle, so calm and so welcoming, that, when the first notes of “Tiny Dancer” emerged from the sound system, the song didn’t seem at all incongruous. The hour or so in the hangar had been festive and happy, the air warm and the sky blue. When it was announced that Trump’s plane would be landing imminently, the crowd had moved closer to the tarmac, and a succession of local politicians had given short speeches about the merits of Trump, of faith and of diversity. When they finished, Trump’s plane came into view, taxiing toward the hangar, and the soundtrack to it all was “Tiny Dancer”. For a few minutes, as women bounced on their toes and hundreds of cameras were held aloft, that gorgeous song took over.

Blue jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band

Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man

Ballerina, you must have seen her, dancing in the sand

And now she’s in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand

For a moment it seemed possible that the person about to get out of the plane was a man of subtle taste and kindness, a man who could appreciate such beauty, who was secure enough in himself to set his arrival in Sacramento to the soundtrack of a 45-year-old song by a gay troubadour.

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When the plane got closer, though, “Tiny Dancer” gave way to the film score from Air Force One. The theme was portentous and loud, and the mood of the moment pivoted drastically, from Elton’s sweet poignancy, implying the arrival of a tired touring man coming to greet his supporters late in the California afternoon, to something far more fascist-theatrical. The plane got closer, and the audience was meant to blur, mentally for a moment, the lines between Harrison Ford playing the president and Donald Trump doing the same – between the real Air Force One, the filmic version, and Trump’s plane.

The plane rolled slowly, directly, towards the hangar, before turning to run parallel with the crowd, the full length of the plane positioned behind the podium. Once the plane stopped, the theme from Air Force One ended, and when the plane’s door opened and Trump emerged, the music changed drastically again: now to explosive EDM, which sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Trump was wearing a blue suit, a white shirt and his red baseball cap. He has not historically been the kind of man who would wear a baseball cap. He is not a man known to appear in public casually dressed. Photos of him wearing shorts or jeans – common accessories to a baseball hat – would be hard to find. And yet this hat has become emblematic of his campaign, and is the most common souvenir worn by his supporters.

But the only reason the hat exists at all is because Trump can’t appear outside without risking the precarious cotton-candy sculpture of his hair coming undone. For years, he had been caught on camera with his hair swirled high in the air, exposing his bald dome, his golden hairs standing on end, 12 inches skyward. He looked ludicrous and vulnerable. He looked like a clown. So in the early days of this campaign, he arrived at a solution: the hat.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump in his baseball cap. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

Though it solves the problem of his flyaway hair, observers from the rest of the world should know that Trump does not know how to wear a baseball cap. He wears it very low on his head, such that the top of it billows up and out like a baker’s, or a train conductor’s, hat. But Trump’s cap, however clumsily worn, has had an unexpected result. With his red cap on, the glossy billionaire living in a gilt Manhattan apartment appears to have something in common with the rest of the country, who wear caps when they’re actually at baseball games, when they’re driving tractors through wheat fields, when they’re barbecuing in their backyards. And maybe because he looks so ridiculous in it, Trump’s hat is something of an equaliser.

“Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Veterans. I love the veterans.” This is how he began. “So I raised almost $6m for the veterans, and the press was killing me. Unbelievable.” He had barely said hello and was already riffing. “You know, you do something like that and it takes your heart a little bit.”

These were the first sentences of Trump’s speech, and they reveal why Trump is so captivating as a speaker. First of all, there was barely a preamble. There was nothing like the usual litany of careful gratitude towards the local political machinery. In fact, Trump acknowledged not one of the speakers that preceded him and praised him. Instead, he went straight to the red meat, to vivid, hard-punching words: six million dollars. Veterans. Press. Killing. All of this was unscripted. Then he backed off and showed something like vulnerability. “It takes your heart a little bit.” He had everyone enthralled.

“But the press,” he continued, “they always want to make it look as bad as possible. These are bad people. They are bad, bad people.” The audience looked back at the press platform and booed loudly. Trump mentioned the press derisively many more times during his speech, later calling them “liars”, “scumbags” and “bad human beings”. About the local newspaper, he said, “Does anyone know what the hell the Sacramento Bee is? They were actually very nice to me, which is amazing.”

He straddled this dichotomy throughout his speech: he claims to be at war with the press, but his campaign’s success has been made possible by the media’s relentless coverage of his every move. And though they are critical of Trump, the media has profited greatly from the public’s fascination with him. Trump bragged about how much coverage his campaign had been getting. “We’re on the cover of literally every magazine,” he said. “Every magazine. And oftentimes, we’re on the cover many, many times.”

“They say there are 11,000 people in the hangar,” he said, to cheers from the audience. “Last night I watched as Bernie had a crowd of 3,000 people. That’s not bad. That’s not bad. And the news media said, ‘Bernie Sanders had this massive crowd of 3,000 people.’ You know what 3,000 people is? It’s like a small audience, it’s like forget it. When we have a crowd like this – look at this!” They cheered again.

The actual capacity of the hangar was 2,500, and that day it was less than half full. But factual accuracy is not the point of Trump’s speeches. The point is entertainment, and Trump delivers. Any given portion of his speech contained a lively mix of boasts, jokes, grievances, name-calling, threats, exaggerations and non sequiturs – all of it delivered theatrically, without notes and with great comic timing, aided by his guttural accent and his gift for crude but memorable language. Over the next 44 minutes, he had vivid and unvarnished things to say about the North American Free Trade Agreement (“a total disaster”) and the World Trade Organisation (“a catastrophe”). He said the elected leaders in Washington are “stupid, stupid people” and that Hillary Clinton was “a person with absolutely no natural talent”. The fact that she was allowed to run at all, given her email imbroglio, was “a disgrace”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People listen to Trump speak at a campaign rally. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

But at least half of his speech was about himself, and the various slights inflicted upon him. He talked about how, during the early debates with his Republican opponents, he preferred it when there was an odd number of candidates. “It used to bother me when we had an even number. I said I want an odd number! Because I want to be in the centre!” Even when he talked about issues of national security or trade, often it was a way of getting to a complaint about how this broader national issue affected Trump’s personal business and wealth. Below is a word-for-word transcription of one his rambles:

“We’re gonna bring your jobs back. We’re gonna make things so much better. We’re not going to let these countries get away with what they’re doing. They’re ripping you off. They’re taking your jobs. By the way, today. In golf. Anybody see what happened? They moved the World Golf Championship, which used to be Cadillac, a great sponsor by the way, Cadillac. They moved the World Golf Championships from Miami to Mexico City. Can you believe it? Think of it! So they moved the PGA Tour, moved the World Golf Championship from Miami, where they’re furious, to Mexico City. Not good. But that’s OK. Folks! It’s all going to be settled. You vote for Donald Trump, this stuff is all gonna stop.”

Did he mention that he is the owner of the golf course in Miami that has traditionally hosted the World Golf Championship? He did not. Maybe everyone knew. But the cheers were loud, though it wasn’t clear what everyone was cheering about. What was going to stop? What was going to be settled? Was it the return of the World Golf Championship to Miami? Did it have something to do with Cadillac?

“You like that airplane?” he said, jabbing a thumb behind him. “It’s good, right? Made in America. Made in America. Boeing.” The crowd roared and looked at the plane. On closer examination, there was something strange about the plane. It looked like it had come from another decade. And that decade was the 1980s. Trump’s name was emblazoned on it in a font called Akzidenz-Grotesk, a typeface popular 30 years ago. Its tail bore a giant “T”, rendered in a way that implied it had been striped by high winds. This was another design motif from the 80s, usually used on children’s basketball shoes.

And then it came together. I’d been watching Trump’s speech, hearing the crowd laugh and cheer and have a good time in the early evening sun, and all along I’d been trying to put my finger on what the rally reminded me of. And now, my head back in the 1980s, it hit me: Andrew Dice Clay. He might not be familiar to audiences outside the US, but in the 80s, for a few years, he was the most popular comedian in America. He would come out looking like the Fonz – in jeans, a leather jacket and a white T-shirt – and he’d tell jokes that were politically incorrect but often very funny. His posture was that of a braggy thug from Brooklyn, saying crude things on the street corner. At the height of his fame, he could sell out stadiums.

It was just an act, of course. But like a lot of comedy, the appeal is in the forbidden delight in hearing highly inappropriate things spoken into a microphone. We can’t believe someone said that, on stage, or behind a podium, to so many.

For a year now, pollsters, the media and the world at large have been baffled by the fact that no incendiary or asinine thing Trump says or tweets seems to make any dent in his appeal. He has broadcast countless statements that would sink any other candidate. (In his Sacramento speech, he repeatedly called the US a “third world country”, which would be the end of any other campaign in American history.) And for a year we’ve all assumed that when Trump said something xenophobic or sexist or offensive to the world’s billion Muslims, or the world’s billion Catholics (remember when he took on the pope?), or to the world’s 3.5 billion women, it must mean that his supporters agree with his newest outrageous statement.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump poses with firefighters after the rally. Photograph: Dave Eggers

But this is not true. Something very different is happening. His supporters are not really listening to anything he says. They cheer when he says he’ll help the veterans, they cheer when he says he’ll build a wall, but ultimately they do not care what he says. They don’t care if he actually will build a wall. If Trump decided, tomorrow, to reverse himself on the idea of building a wall, his supporters would shrug and their support would not waver. He has been for gun control and against gun control. He has stated his support for Planned Parenthood and for the idea of criminal punishment for women who seek abortions. He has called the Iraq war, and most of our adventures in the Middle East, mistakes, but has said he would carpet bomb Isis. He has reversed himself on nearly every major issue, often in the same week, and has offered scant specifics on anything in particular – though in Sacramento, about infrastructure, he did say, “We’re gonna have new roads, bridges, all that stuff”.

His supporters do not care. Nothing in Trump’s platform matters. There is no policy that matters. There is no promise that matters. There is no villain, no scapegoat, that matters. If, tomorrow, he said that Canadians, not Mexicans, were rapists and drug dealers, and the wall should be built on that border, no one would blink. His poll numbers would not waver. Because there are no positions and no statements that matter to them. There is only the man, the name, the brand, the personality they have seen on television.

Believing that Trump’s supporters are all fascists or racists is a grave mistake. This day in Sacramento presented a different picture, of a thousand or so regular people who thought it was pretty cool how Trump showed up in a plane with his name on it. How naughty it was when he called the president “stupid”. How funny it was when he said the word “huge” the peculiar way he does, without the “h” (the audience yelled back “uuuuge!”, laughing half with him, half at him). In the same way we rooted for Clay a few years ago when he showed up as an actual actor in a Woody Allen movie, the audience at a Trump rally is thinking, How funny would it be if this guy were across the table from Angela Merkel? That would be classic.

Americans who have voted for Trump in the primaries have done so not because they agree with all, or any, of his statements or promises, but because he is an entertainment. He is a loud, captivating distraction and a very good comedian. His appeal is aided by these rallies, and by media coverage, and both are fuelled not by substance but by his willingness to say crazy shit. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, has insisted that they “let Trump be Trump” and the wisdom of the strategy is undeniable. As long as he continues to say crazy shit, he will continue to dominate the news and will continue to attract crowds. The moment he ceases to entertain – to say crazy shit – he will evaporate.

Or even before that, people could just get bored. This happened in Sacramento. Just over halfway through his speech, people started leaving. Twenty-five minutes in, he had begun to repeat himself, and he’d started looking down at the podium, reading dubious statistics about Sacramento’s economic situation. People didn’t care. At one point he read from an article he said he’d clipped from a newspaper. He was getting too specific, and the entertainment value was sinking.

People from the front of the crowd started making their way back, and out. It started with the elderly woman in the Veterans of Foreign Wars hat. She, and the two people helping her, squeezed their way through the throng and into the darkness of the hangar. This began a steady flow of the departing. These people had arrived at 4pm, had waited three hours and now, at 7.30pm, they were leaving. Trump was still talking, but they were not worried about missing anything he would say, because they did not care. They had seen him, heard the zingers, taken a picture or two, and now they were heading to the parking lot, to get a head start on the traffic.

By the time Trump finished, there was no one behind me. Most of the hangar was empty. The only people left were the few hundred outside, pressed against the barricades, waiting for him to sign their posters and hats. As he moved down the line, as the sun finally set and the night finally cooled, the song playing, just as poignantly as it had when he arrived, was “Tiny Dancer”.

Hold me closer tiny dancer

Count the headlights on the highway

Lay me down on sheets of linen

You had a busy day today.

• Dave Eggers is the author of The Circle and A Hologram for the King. His forthcoming book is Heroes of the Frontier.