He spoke off the cuff, per usual, inserting parenthetical digressions on familiar topics—Biden as the worst president ever, DeSantis as a turncoat, and Haley as a Trojan horse for liberals who were trying to help Biden by eliminating Trump. “She can’t negotiate. I’m telling you, she can’t negotiate,” he said, to laughter. “I actually think she might go to the Democrat Party.… Her biggest donors are backers of Crooked Joe Biden.”
“He definitely has a way about him,” said Christine Ciampa, who had traveled from her home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Before Trump hit the scene in 2015, she was tuned out to politics. But he penetrated her indifference. “He definitely has charisma, whether you like it or not.… He can cut through the bullshit, if I can say that. He seems very real and unscripted.”
In the hotel lobby, when the security staff started to dismantle the metal detectors and scanners, even the remaining die-hards realized that they had no chance to get inside. It was a knock, but they were used to getting knocked about. Trump had, after all, lost the Senate, lost the House, and lost the White House.