Read my column to hear about my experience at the President Trump's midterm rally in Syracuse. (Photo by Tyler Murphy)

(Editorial column)


It was a pleasant ride through the fall countryside of Chenango, Madison and Onondaga counties. I passed Amish buggies, sprawling farms and blazing red and yellow hillsides. It was a nice ride all the way to Syracuse and the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center where thousands of area residents were lined up to hear President Donald Trump speak.

I arrived in Syracuse around 2 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9. I would not get through the doors until about 5:30 p.m.

The line was immense, a giant snake coiling back and forth across a parking lot in loops hundreds of yards long. If you had straightened it out, I’d guess it ran more than half a mile.

Between the coils, vendors walked the rows selling Trump memorabilia. There were booths raising money for veterans, American flags for sale and a giant screen, at least as tall as I am, flashing patriotic images. Officers watched from nearby rooftops. Drones drifted over the crowd and swung back every so often to scan us. The VIPs and the press had their own entrances. The rest of us, thousands of us, waited for hours.

When I got in line, I introduced myself to the people ahead of me and behind me. I spent much of the wait with two lovely women named Patty and Connie. They had never seen the president before, and we all agreed we might never get another chance.

We talked about our families, our politics and the beautiful weather. Music played over the loudspeakers, and when “Sweet Caroline” and a few other favorites came on, the whole crowd would burst into song.

Sometime that afternoon, I noticed a group across the street. Three or four people. They were dressed in dark clothes and carried a dark flag.

At first, I thought they were homeless people flying an ISIS flag. Then one of them pulled out a bullhorn and began spewing the most horrible language and obscenities at the crowd. That’s when I realized they were protesters with an Antifa flag.

Up to then, we hadn’t seen a single protester. From the line you never saw more than five or six of them. The handful of protesters took breaks from shouting on the bullhorn to give interviews and smoke what smelled like marijuana.

As the expletives and sexual innuendo poured out of that bullhorn, most of us barely noticed. But if you happened to be on the far side of the parking lot when the line moved, you saw parents telling their young children not to pay attention. Old ladies shook their heads. The rest of us just laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, and at them.

Like the few other protesters we would encounter that night, they only made themselves look completely crazy, completely obscene and completely disrespectful. It made you glad you were on this side of the street.

We had heard there would be protesters. My family and others had warned me to be careful, that you could be targeted for your beliefs and your political perspective by the radical left.

I have been personally threatened many times. I have been threatened in less direct ways many times. Intimidation and bullying is rampant and very personal in a small town. Some people, when they disagree with you on these things, think there are no bounds, and they treat you like a savage.

I doubt there is a Conservative in New York who has spoken up publicly and not paid some price for it.

Insulting people, going after other people they know, threatening their job: that is un-American.

Especially when all you have done is say you want to take part in democracy and you’re proud of America, its history and its heritage. For some people you can never be ashamed enough.

A few hours into the line, about halfway to the door, I noticed an older woman wearing an American flag scarf. She was dressed nicely, standing with her friends and managing the wait as well as she could

A young campaign volunteer, a teenager, in an American flag shirt and a Trump hat, noticed her, too. He walked over and asked how old she was and how she was doing.

He learned she was 90 and asked her if she would like to move ahead of the line.

“I’m fine,” she said.

But the crowd wasn’t having it. We all insisted she be allowed to go first Her group was waved ahead so she could get inside and find a chair.

Nobody planned that moment. It just happened, the way so much happened that day. At every step, people were kind. People were respectful. People paid attention to each other. People seemed to care about each other.

I have thought a lot about why. Maybe it’s because so many of us live surrounded by hostility over our politics in New York that we felt a camaraderie you rarely find in ordinary life. Certainly not online. I think we appreciated it. And as a kind of thank-you, everyone was on their best behavior.

At first, you do what people normally do. You keep to yourself. You try not to talk to strangers. But you are there for hours, and at some point you give in. Then everyone is talking. Strangers trading stories. People laughing at each other’s shirts. Singing together. The excitement of seeing the president, the sea of flags, the drones overhead, the local politicians and celebrities, the media everywhere. You felt like you were part of something special. Something you would remember.

Near the entrance, the line narrowed into a maze of crowd-control fences before passing through metal detectors, where Secret Service agents checked bags and waved people through. Police were posted on the closed streets, at the entrance, on the balconies and in the hallways.

When I walked into the hall, I’d guess 1,000 to 1,500 people were already ahead of me. I’m no expert at judging crowds, but it was immense. When I looked back toward the door, the line still coiled through the parking lot longer than when I first arrived.

I went as far toward the stage as I could, until I hit three or four rows that had been marked off. An attendant, an older woman, told me those seats were reserved, but I could take any seat without a name on it. So, naturally, I started checking for a single open seat in row five or six.

A kind woman named Colleen, sitting with her young son saw me searching. She leaned over, asked if I was looking for a seat and offered me the empty one next to him.

The chair had probably been overlooked, and the row had especially packed so tightly that it was practically crushed between its neighbors. There was no elbow room. There was no legroom. Fixing it would have meant moving the whole row. I eased it back a little so I wouldn’t crowd anyone and took it gratefully. I saw it as a great opportunity, and an extraordinary kindness from a total stranger.

It put me directly in front of the podium, maybe 30 feet from the stage. It would not be my last seat of the night.

There was a prayer. There was the Pledge of Allegiance. There was the National Anthem. Speakers came out to glorious, all-American rock music, and people sang along. Between speakers, people talked and shared stories.

The president was due at 7 p.m. and ran late, so for 30 minutes the crowd had nothing to do but talk.

People described the hostility they had faced, especially online. Some worried about being punished at work. A few said they worked in local government and feared retaliation if anyone found out they were there. We talked about the biased media reporting, the lack of truth, the lack of pride in America and the political grievances we all seemed to share.

There was no shortage of that pride in that room. Almost everyone wore something patriotic: flags, historical slogans, the Founding Fathers. It was refreshing to be surrounded by people who truly love America even knowing they can be punished for it.

It was refreshing, too, to have an open political conversation without bracing for judgment, a personal attack or someone screaming vulgarities at you. Sitting there, I thought about how much Chenango County has changed in my lifetime. I wished we had more of that pride at home.

Then the arrivals started, and each one sent a jolt through the room.

When Mike Tyson walked in, everyone buzzed about it and phones went up for pictures. Tom Homan and Lee Zeldin drew the same excitement. Every arrival was a sign that Air Force One had landed and the president was close.

By then the room was standing room only, all the way to the back walls. Behind me was an ocean of people. And at the very back, like an island of blazing lights, sat a packed platform of media who seemed like they could not get enough, whether for love or hate. President Donald Trump draws a lot of attention, and there was no lack of it there.

People I took to be Secret Service agents began appearing near the stage. Staff stepped up to the lectern and replaced its emblem with the presidential seal.

That could mean only one thing.

Even before he came through the door, you could feel it. Then the music hit, Donald Trump walked into the room, and every single person stood up and pulled out a phone. 

People climbed onto their chairs. Children were lifted so they could see. I mean genuine, wild cheering. There was love in that room. There was joy. It was remarkable, and unless you are the most miserable hater alive, I don’t know how you could stand in the middle of it and not notice it. 

Seeing him in person, not on a TV or a computer screen, made the whole thing human in a way I didn’t expect. He is different from the rest of us in a lot of ways, but standing there, he was as human as anyone. He was the calmest person in the room, it was remarkable.

I kept trying to imagine what it must be like to be him: to look out over thousands of people and see a wall of phones recording your every step. A face simply looking back at him might have been the strangest thing to see.

It made me think of Barack Obama, who I also once supported. Obama was a controversial president, too, but I remember the excitement he brought, the speeches, the rallies, the way he lit up his followers. In the decades I have been paying attention to politics, I can’t recall anyone else who could do that other than Trump, if not more so.  

People stayed on their feet and kept recording well into the first hour. You could see some of them wanting to sit, then looking back up at the president and deciding against it. I knew exactly what they were thinking: This might be the only time I ever see him. I’m going to stand.

There were interruptions. I thought there were two or three, though I couldn’t always tell whether it was a new person or the same one again. Inside a crowd that size, you barely notice. All you really see is some person flipping out, barely visible over the crowd, dropping F-bombs and saying all kinds of crazy things you can’t even understand.

They showed such utter obscenity, hatred and cruelty toward Donald Trump and the crowd that I hesitate even to call them left-wing protesters. For all I know, they were right-wing protesters acting as ridiculous as possible on purpose, to make the left look ridiculous, hateful and spiteful. At the very least, I don’t think you could tell the two apart.

Either way, they were obscene, hateful and short-lived. Other than about 15 seconds of entertaining remarks from the president, they had no impact on anything. They were the butt of everybody’s joke. They highlighted just how crazy the left has become, and they made everyone in that room feel more normal.

Still, it felt personal. When you are part of that crowd, at a completely legitimate political rally you support, for your own reasons, nobody has the right to interfere with that. When these people do these things, you don’t feel like they’re protesting the president or attacking Donald Trump. You feel like they’re attacking you, too. They are trying to interfere with our right in this democracy to support the candidate of our choice. And they do it on purpose.

In the end, they were just part of the show. They made Trump more interesting and exciting to watch. I would actually say they boosted the experience, which made me wonder whether they were actors. It all seemed to play so well.

The media, of course, had the perfect view of it. Trump prioritizes the experience of his supporters. He gives them the front rows, premium access and sides of the stage. The media is relegated to a fenced-in island at the rear of the room, and they aren’t allowed to leave. But they always get pictures of the people being thrown out. 

My own view of the protests was limited to the small group across from our line and the outbursts inside. From what we heard there and saw on social media, a larger demonstration gathered somewhere downtown, far from us, and then went home. I never saw it. What I saw were thousands of people who arrived by 2 p.m., stayed all day, filled that room and would leave by the thousands close to 10:30 at night.

About an hour into the speech, some people who had pushed forward toward the stage began drifting back to their original seats. In the shuffle, spots opened up right in front.

The same woman who had offered me the seat beside her son had managed to move up. When she came back, her son stayed up front, and she told me to go take one of the open spots. No one seemed to mind.

I could not resist.

I moved up to the first row and listened to more than the second half of the speech from 10 or 15 feet away from the president of the United States. To my right was a line of VIPs. It was an experience I could never have planned or arranged.

It was fate. It was luck. I had happened to pick a seat in the middle of the row. The ends near the aisles were jammed, but in the middle, spaces opened up, and all I had to do was move up a few rows. And twice, a stranger with no reason to help me beyond simple kindness had made room for me. Why waste space?

From that close, the Secret Service became one of the most fascinating parts of the night. The agents around the president never turned off. Not once. They scanned the crowd constantly. They never leaned on anything. They never drifted into side conversations. They never looked tired. Their professionalism was frightening.

When it was over, everybody scrambled for souvenirs. You couldn’t bring signs in, but there were signs and flags to be had inside, and people snatched up every last one to carry home.

Everyone was smiling. People kept talking about how remarkable it had been. It felt like walking out of the best rock concert of your life.

It was dark when I got back outside. There were no protesters. Just police, and hundreds and hundreds of happy, polite people splitting off in every direction and heading out of the city. It was a beautiful night.