‘It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World,’ is a Donald Trump favorite. He plays the James Brown and Pavarotti duet to show off his new sound system aboard Trump Force One and it is a regular on the pre-rally playlist.
But when Brown belted out the opening line, ‘This is a man’s world,’ on Wednesday evening it had taken on added significance.
Joe Biden was out of the race and Trump was now facing a female opponent just as he had in 2016.
With a pre-rally playlist dripping in a throwback idea of masculinity, think 70s and 80s guitars and Kid Rock singing about sleeping with ‘hoes’, the message was clear: I am the leader who will deliver strength.
Trump was appearing for his first rally since Biden upended the election on Sunday. Supporters at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, were the first to see just what that meant for his rally speeches.
Donald Trump enters the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, for his first campaign rally since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race
Aides, who are privately delighted at the turmoil among Democrats eating one of their own but wary of a new opponent who has two decades on their guy, say it’s business as usual.
Trump is still running against the record of the administration, with its inflated prices and immigration crisis.
‘I mean, from a messaging standpoint nothing changed,’ said spokesman Steven Cheung, who huddled in the press pen with journalists just before Trump took the stage.
‘You know, we’re still running against policy. We’re still running against the Biden Harris administration. Nothing changed.’
And yet everything has changed, as the jumbotron (which normally displays scores for the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League) demonstrated three minutes later.
There she was. The new opponent, with her face four-feet tall, in a montage of clips showing her promising to ban offshore drilling, humming and hawing about whether she would visit the border, and saying that she would support public health access for undocumented immigrants.
‘This is who Democrats deposed Joe Biden for,’ runs the opening caption for the 90-second video.
‘Failed, weak and dangerously liberal,’ runs the closing one.
The result was the sound of about 12,000 people booing, creating the sort of noise that would have triggered a tsunami warning if it had been in Japan, not in one of the key election battlegrounds that could decide the 2024 election.
Trump spoke for 92 minutes, giving Kamala Harris the full focus of his attention
The view from the press pen. Cameras mounted on a riser at the back of the arena capture the sight nd sound of more than 12,000 fans on Wednesday night
Trump’s Georgia mugshot was everywhere, on signs and T-shirts. ‘I’d rather vote for a felon than a jackass,’ was spotted on one man’s t-shirt
It set the tone for the 92 minutes of Trump’s speech.
He showed none of the after effects of the shooting just 10 days earlier. Where he had cut a watery-eyed figure at the Republican convention last week, bearing gratitude for the reaction to the assassination attempt, on Wednesday evening he quickly promised there would be no more Mr Nice Guy.
‘I’m not going to be nice,’ he said, before spending the rest of his speech beating up on his new rival.
He painted her as Biden’s border czar (in fact she was tasked by the president with tackling the root causes of immigration in a handful of Latin American countries, and had nothing to do with the frontier itself) who would allow millions of migrants into the country if she were president.
‘Kamala’s deadly destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying,’ he said. ‘She shouldn’t be allowed to run for president with what she’s done.’
He brought out guests representing police officers and Border Patrol officers, the better to make the point that even a felon could be tougher on crime and immigration than Harris.
He branded her as the most radical liberal lawmaker in Washington and accused ‘lying Kamala’ of playing a key role in hiding Biden’s decline from the nation.
‘In addition to a horrendous record as vice president, Kamala Harris has also been caught red handed, perpetrating the biggest scandal in American political history,’ he said
‘For three and a half years Harris shamelessly lied to the public to cover up Joe Biden’s mental unfit disclaiming that crooked Joe was at the absolute top of his game. I don’t think so.’
The Trump campaign must deal with a change in opponent. Biden is out. Harris is in
The coliseum’s capacity is 9,000 for sporting events, but more people filled the floor
Supporters lined up for hours in the soaring heat to secure a place inside the arena
The crowd lapped it up. Like a WWE bout there were moments to boo the baddies and cheer the goodies.
One man wore an ‘I’d rather vote for a felon than a jackass’ T-shirt.
Trump was done well before 8pm, in time to get back on his jet and watch Biden’s address from the Oval Office, setting out why he was not now running for reelection.
But for all the delight at the away Biden had been dispatched, there was a smattering of concern in the rally crowd. Could a younger female candidate excite Democrats in a way that a doddering old man could not?
After all, James Brown may sing that it’s a man’s world, but his next line is ‘it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.’
Frank Farmer, 30, who runs two businesses including an ammo box company, was more grudging in his assessment of Harris.
‘I think she’s marginally tougher but she’s so braindead I don’t think it makes a huge amount of difference,’ he said.
He went on to explain that she might be able to bring out more women and black voters than Biden … before his friend cuts him off.
‘And she has a little less cognitive challenges,’ said the friend with a grin.
