MILWAUKEE—We are walking two-by-two through a maze of Rent-a-Fence steel barricades flanked by cop cars towards the doors of the theater wearing Trump hats, camo hats, hunter orange, black hoodies, Army service uniforms, suits, t-shirts that say "BUILD THE WALL" and "TRUMP THAT BITCH." Outside the barriers there are Shriners running around in dinner jackets and maroon fezzes. One is whispering to a cop. Hard to put your finger on it but you can feel it: the foreboding, the hints of conspiracy and apocalypse. A guy outside the line in a Bernie Sanders t-shirt is standing next to an older woman. "Don’t get into trouble," she says.
When we get to the doors I am moved away from the group and directed to the press entrance. I ask the Secret Service guy waving his metal detector wand under my armpits what’s going on: "How many cops would you say are here?" He says he can’t tell me.
I am not allowed to walk into the theater myself. A guy wearing a jacket with the Reuters insignia and a camera waits with me for our escort past the concession stand into the auditorium, where we are marched to the right side of the mezzanine level. Three men in white uniforms—Secret Service again? Trump’s private security?—stand on either side of the press section. Two journalists behind me are whispering. "Can we go down there and talk to these people?" Below us in the orchestra area a line of young people dressed in black are standing in front of the stage pumping their fists chanting "USA! USA! USA!" while over the loudspeakers Mick Jagger sings "Time is On My Side."
After an hour, a man in a black three-piece suit takes the stage. He screams at us for the next 10 minutes. "I am Pastor Mark Burns, and I am here on assignment to let the great state of Wisconsin know that no matter what the media tries to say about Donald Trump, we will elect him the next president of the United States of America!" Burns lays into Ted Cruz and John Kasich and Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton—prompting cries of "Traitor! Traitor!" from the audience—and then attacks those of us in the press section. "I don't care who you are, Kasich," he says. "You can cry all day." When he finishes there is more fist pumping. "Trump! Trump! Trump!"
Pastor Burns is followed by a tall thin man with short dark hair. "Hello, my name is Stephen Miller," he says. "I am senior policy adviser to Donald J. Trump." As it happens, I know Miller slightly. He is a very nice and smart guy. But tonight, with his face bathed in gold light, he reminds me of a sinister ringmaster announcing the commencement of some macabre circus. He makes good points about Ronald Reagan’s trade policy, the most protectionist of any modern Republican president. He also calls Ted Cruz "a Wall Street extremist who doesn’t care about the security and safety of the American people" and denounces "magazines like National Review that say Americans should die." When he asks people in their audience to raise their hands if they know someone who has lost a job due to outsourcing or immigration, every hand in the room goes up. He ends by exhorting the audience to vote tomorrow. "This is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"
Then House of Pain’s "Jump Around" starts and Trump enters from the right side of the stage. It’s hilarious, surreal, carnivalesque. He says tonight’s speech is going to be a "quickie," citing a Brewers game and the NCAA basketball championship. Before he starts in earnest he brings out Melania. "We love you!" a man shouts from near the front. She is here to tell us about her husband. "He’s hard worker, he’s kind," she says. "As you know by now, if you attack him he will punch back ten times harder. No matter who you are, a man or a woman, he treats everyone equal."
There is one more special guest, a "tremendous, tremendous woman" and former Miss Wisconsin whose name Trump forgets to share. She cries on stage. "This is the greatest man I have ever met. His heart is made of pure gold," she says. "My fellow-Wisconsinites, please, tomorrow, vote for Mr. Trump."
After Trump puts his arm around her waist and escorts her offstage, he starts his stump speech. Trump speaks for less than an hour. I realize I’ve forgotten how compelling a presence he is in a can’t-watch but-can’t-peel-my-eyes-away manner. His insults are still funny. "Kasich, I don’t think he’s a player here. He’s one for 32. In all fairness, Jeb Bush was doing better than that." At first I wonder whether the audience will find some of the material about Cruz and the wall and our stupid leaders and their bad deals stale. They must have heard all of it by now. But they don’t care. Everyone outside the press area is standing up. "Look at you people, you don’t even sit down," Trump says. "I like that. It’s a sign of affection, a sign of respect." When he mentions Rubio, everyone screams "Little Marco!" When Cruz comes up, they chime in with "Lyin’ Ted!"
The weirdest thing all night is Trump’s reading of "The Snake," a 1968 soul single by Al Wilson that he sees as an illustration of America’s immigration policy. (He attributes it to "the great Al Green.") Sounding like he’s doing a spoken-word recording, he runs through four verses:
On her way to work one morning
Down the path along side the lake
A tenderhearted woman saw a poor half-frozen snake.
His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew
"Oh well," she cried, "I’ll take you in and I’ll take care of you."
"Take me in O tender woman,
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in O tender woman," sighed the snake
The orchestra section is completely full, so there are a few people sitting in the mezzanine. One of them, a very large man with a grey mullet in a hoodie and cargo pants, shouts and shakes his fist and stomps his feet through everything, even the reading. No one raises an eyebrow when Trump talks about Japan sending "cars by the millions" in "the biggest greatest ships you’ve ever seen" or complains about not being made Person of the Year by Time. "I wonder if they’d do the same thing if they could do it over again. I’ve been on the cover a lot."
Trump ends with an anecdote about a woman he saw on TV who said she would never consider supporting another candidate. "I wanted to hug that television set. You’re all like that!" he says. "Get out and vote, I love you all."
I exit through the front doors to the strains of the "Get Ready for This" theme from Space Jam. Here we are again, huddled together, walking slowly through the galvanized steel corridors. It is 15 degrees outside and you can see everyone’s breath. A boy who looks to be about 12 is talking to his mother. "The media pretend like Trump is such a dick and that these things are like KKK rallies," he says. "They’re so stupid."
When we reach the street again, there are booths selling Trump merchandise of varying degrees of authenticity. There are people handing out pamphlets and flyers. One of them approaches me. "Read about how the Pope is a tool of Satan," she says with unsettling detachment. I read the heading at the top of the paper she has handed me: "ARE THE IRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, THE MAFIA AND LABOR UNIONS PART OF THE VATICAN?"
"You know what?" I said. "This is pretty sick."