Last week, the future looked grim for Trump loyalists. Robert Mueller’s investigation picked up steam; Trumpcare stalled in the Senate; and, six months into his term, the President had the highest disapproval ratings since Presidential polling was invented. Yet, if you were a food vender, a rollerblader, or a yogini on the West Side of Manhattan, you might have been comforted, or triggered, by a familiar spectacle: a one-man racing shell, bobbing in the Hudson River, flying a flag that said “Trump 2020.”

“I’m out here every weekday,” Dion Cini, the rower, said. “I’ve been doing it since March, and I’ll be out doing it until the 2020 election. The only thing that might change—and I doubt this will happen—but, if they do actually indict Trump and kick him out of office, I’ll just change it to a Pence flag and keep going.”

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Cini lives on the Upper West Side. On Tuesday morning, he rode a foldable bike to the small midtown boathouse where he stores his scull. “I don’t live like other people,” he said. “I cook my own food. I wash my own clothes. I don’t know when we stopped being self-sufficient in this country.” Cini is forty-eight, tan, and stocky; a veteran, he wore a U.S. Marine Corps visor and sunglasses. He stashed his bike and changed out of a wicking shirt into an even-more-wicking mesh tank top, revealing a biceps tattoo based on the Disney movie “Fantasia.” “Ask me how many times I’ve been to Disney World,” he said. “A thousand. I model my life after Walt Disney’s in many ways. He was an überconservative, which is what I’d call myself.” Cini owns a business that sells software to hospitals, and it does well enough for him to live as if he were semi-retired. “During the summer, I mostly let my staff do the work,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll take a call while I’m out on the river, and the person on the other end will go, ‘Do I hear water in the background?’ ” He was untroubled by Trump’s failure to overhaul the health-care system. “I made a bunch of money during Obamacare, to be honest,” he said. “As for the other stuff—the tweets, the ‘grab ’em by the pussy’—it’s stupid, but it’s Trump being Trump. He’s got a good heart, that’s the important thing.”

Cini dragged the scull—eighteen feet long and pencil-shaped—from the boathouse to the dock, then affixed pontoons to its sides and the Trump flag to its stern. The provocation has a purpose, he said. “I’m not out here just to make a scene. It’s campaign advertising—Trump 2020.” Depending on the current, he rows to Governors Island, or over to Brooklyn, or up to the Bronx. “I’ve probably been seen by hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “I know there are tourists, maybe even New Yorkers, who think there is not a single Trump supporter in this city. Well, now they know there’s at least one.”

On an average day, Cini said, he draws twenty thumbs-ups and “at least a hundred” middle fingers. “The guys doing construction on Hudson Yards—they’re always supportive. So are the Coast Guard boats, the Fire Department boats. Down around the West Village is where things start turning ugly. In Brooklyn, they sometimes try to come up with something witty, but in the West Village it’s always the same: ‘Fuck Trump!’ ‘I hope you drown!’ My favorite is ‘He’ll never win.’ I just go, ‘Yep, that’s what you said last time.’ ”

Shortly before noon, Cini shoved the scull into the water and started rowing downriver. Another boathouse member, returning from a standup paddle ride, watched him go. “Everybody is polite to him,” the paddleboarder said. “There are definitely side conversations—‘What is he thinking?’—but we would never say anything, in case he’s, like, aggressive.”

Cini hugged the shore, to avoid barges and to listen for catcalls. Just south of Chelsea, a handful of construction workers chanted, “Go Trump!” Around Pier 40, a jogger shouted, “You and Trump can both go fuck yourselves!” An hour later, he entered the North Cove Marina, a yacht-filled inlet near the World Trade Center. The dockmaster greeted him, unperturbed by the Trump flag. “We try to stay neutral,” he said. “Better for business.”

Cini removed the flag and took it on a stroll around the marina. “Let’s go fishing for snowflakes,” he said, and called out, “Trump 2020! Ivanka 2024! Barron 2040!” A woman wearing office clothes and eating a takeout salad said to a friend, “I should give that guy the finger, but I’m too lazy.”

Cini sat at an outdoor restaurant. On a TV screen behind the bar, Senator Chuck Schumer was accusing the President of trying to “sabotage” the health-care system. “The more people yell at me, the more determined I get,” Cini said. “Honestly, if I were doing this in St. Louis or Dallas, I’d just get bored.” ♦