“Let her get her condiments! Let her get her condiments!”

A voice belonging to a concessions worker piped up in my favor. Not sure who or where the worker was given all the focus I could muster was trained on a plastic basket of ketchup packets. I snatched one. Two. Three. I yanked my hand away and shuffled over to the adjacent napkin dispenser with my hot dog—the most hard-won frank of my life—before the antsy, disgruntled manager of the Garden Market on the 400 level of Madison Square Garden could clamp my perilously low blood sugar trembling fingers in the stand’s closing metal gate. As soon as I stepped away, the gate loudly clanked down for the second time in three hours. Godspeed anyone who wanted to purchase a bottle of water or a stale soft pretzel.

I wasn’t new to Gate-gate (Hot Dog-gate?). I paid close attention to the stand since I took the escalators to the top of the arena and spotted the snaking line for boxes of popcorn and Pepsi Zero. Brushing off waiting with the rest of the masses, I sat until thirst struck; when it inevitably did, I turned back. The gate was now closed with people desperately chattering at the staff through gaps in the metal slats. Were they out of fries? All tapped out of Starry? Did they need to restock?

More than an hour passed; I heard the recognizable clang of a lifted gate. Finally! I jumped from my seat and joined the back of the line, trailed by a male concessions worker who warned the many others in my wake that the stand was not open. They looked at him. They looked at me. They looked at the front of the line where men in red hats were being handed food boxes. Confused, they stomped dejectedly away. All except for one man who slid behind the increasingly exhausted concessions worker. “I don’t know what she’s doing,” the worker huffed, mostly to himself, barely audible above projected speeches, applause breaks, and “USA! USA! USA!” chants.

“That’s why we’re done with the woke DEI agenda!”

The answer to who the hell SHE was came soon after, as a harried, short but fuming woman, presumably his manager, replaced him in line. “THIS is the end,” she announced. “No more.” The intrepid man behind her, who had now been waiting almost as long as me, stared. Dumbfounded. “Are you serious?” I blurted, unable to bite my tongue for a bag of Wise Honey BBQ chips. “It’s one guy!” “Nope, that’s it,” she responded. “It’s what they’re telling us. HE is the one who rented this out.”

“Our message to my generation, the Millennials, is this. You were sold a false bill of goods. You were told you’d become a gender studies major in California…”

Thankfully, the much calmer male concessions worker returned. Before the frazzled woman left, she advised, “Tell them to go downstairs. It’s open.” He did, only to, then, endure the simmering anguish of a dehydrated woman in a Make America Great Again cap who stormed back up the escalator to inform him she was not even allowed on that floor due to her specific wristband. “This is crazier than a Knicks game,” he said, shaking his head.

“A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney and it’s a vote for more war, likely World War III and a nuclear war.”

With the line inching forward, the manager occasionally popping her head out of the back, making sure no shifty sneaks joined the line for a Mountain Dew, I wondered with trepidation: What was even left for me? One lone cold hot dog? A freezer-burned ice cream sandwich? Some dry-ass popcorn and stiff, teeth-ripping Twizzlers? I’d take anything. ANYTHING!!!

“Today’s Democratic party is the party of war, is the party of the CIA!”

The counter became visible. So did the punchline: a whole new crop of about a dozen hot dogs arrived, warm and steamy, from the back. The fridge had copious bottles of water and Gatorade. There were more than the two soft pretzels workers warned were left. I ordered my hot dog, chips, and water—the last of anyone on the 400 level—and shuffled back to my seat to the croaking voice of RFK Jr.

There were still three hours to go at the Madison Square Garden Trump rally.

***

“Are you here for the Trump rally?” an older close-cropped, white-haired man asked as we both yanked our keys, phones, and wallets out of our pockets onto a folding table for the Secret Service in advance of passing through a metal detector. And there it was. I endured an hour-long wait in a wind tunnel and a brutally halting morass filling up 32^nd Street. I survived the pinch-point, cheek-to-jowl, crush of excited Trump fanatics scurrying across 7^th Avenue, past a Kalshi betting ad on a newspaper stand pitting Donald Trump’s perpetually grumpy profile against Kamala Harris at 62% to 38%. Barely. I avoided (again, barely) tripping up a series of short stairs to file into Madison Square Garden like in a cattle corral. Yet, the moment I dreaded since I left my apartment was here. I must have been pinpointed as someone who stuck out. I didn’t belong. I wasn’t wearing a ‘Never Surrender’ or ‘Fight Fight Fight!’ T-shirt. I wasn’t carrying an American flag or a ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Tea Party throwback. And I didn’t have a MAGA hat—not in old school red, Elon Dark MAGA, or real tree camo. To be clear, I do own official Trump merch, but the Secret Service would likely frown on permitting me to carry the perfect projectile, my turmeric-and-ginger-tea-stained (appropriate for the bronzer-stained former president) mugshot mug. And my Trump hotel slippers would have disintegrated right off my feet by the time I hit Avenue B. So I went with an Anna Nicole Smith hoodie under a leather jacket and hoped that would be white trash enough to pass. Apparently, it wasn’t—or so I thought.

“Yep!” I answered the man quickly. Too quickly. Defensively. He chuckled and turned his attention back to his wife, being wanded by a Secret Service agent. Beyond security? Another fucking line. The same man chirped to two buddies from Lower Manhattan ahead of him: “Here for the Trump rally?” Realizing he wasn’t fingering me as an Other or doing the MSG MAGA version of “You’re not from around these parts, are ya?!” but just being friendly and a bit too chipper for a Sunday afternoon, I piped up again, “No, I saw a line and got in it. What is this for again?”

I was joking, but not entirely. Sure, I threatened to attend Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally as soon as I heard rumblings of a possible booking months ago via my daily rag read The New York Post. No, I am not a Trump supporter and did not vote for Trump, though I resent even having to preface this as if morbid curiosity and a compulsive drive to bear witness might be mistaken for support. For as much as I’ve blathered about Trump as an outsized, nearly unbelievable, deeply American character, so overblown that a fiction editor would say, “It’s a bit much,” I would be a big old coward if I couldn’t suck it up and see the phenomenon with my own eyes.

Plus, my fixation had recently been resurrected thanks to Ali Abbasi’s doubly hilarious and unsettling film The Apprentice, which might be my favorite of the year. Though the opening montage of Sebastian Stan’s Trump stalking around deteriorating late 1970s New York City sleaze set to The Consumers’ “Anti, Anti, Anti” alone satisfied (I could watch that for hours), the film brilliantly follows Trump’s Frankenstein’s monster-like rebirth, including a late, comically on-the-nose (plastic) surgery table scene, thanks to his friendship/mentorship/platonic love affair with Joseph McCarthy lackie, mob/Studio 54 lawyer, and frog tchotchke collector, Roy Cohn. Played by our Number 1 boy Jeremy Strong, Cohn is, of course, yet another endlessly transfixing representation of the American Dream turned nightmare, a Jewish closeted gay man from the Bronx who pushed for the execution of the Rosenbergs and argued against New York’s Gay Rights Bill. It’s through Cohn’s nasally, bug-eyed, bribing, backstabbing influence that Trump transforms from an awkward and nervous fatherboy up-and-comer, collecting rent money from nutjob tenants, one of whom tosses a boiling pot of water his way, while dreaming of revitalizing Manhattan with the purchase of the crapped-out Commodore Hotel, into the ruthless, scamming, philandering, loan-shirking, big-talking, pursed-lip attack (attack, attack) dog we recognize today. The film follows as Trump morphs—his combover becomes more garish, his waistline expands, his mannerisms exaggerate—as his ambition grows, alongside his passion for Atlantic City cheeseballs, all to the visible horror of Cohn, whose increasing illness due to complications with HIV/AIDS inspires sympathy though he merits none of it. Arguing like a married couple over who is the most evil (they both are), Trump and Cohn fully deserve one another—and perhaps, our country, with its obsession with winning at all costs as Cohn explains in a chilling speech to young Donnie, deserves them too. In this context, Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the conquering moment of New York City domination by its native son, is the perfect coda to the film, which concludes with the American flag flapping in Trump’s eyeball.

But threatening to go to the rally and dedicating an entire Sunday to TrumpaMania are two different things. Up until I walked out my apartment door, I wasn’t convinced I would even go, though I signed up for a ticket, which got me a vague “You’re CONFIRMED!” message alongside a flurry of daily texts from the man himself telling me, “Emily, I will always love you!” or “Trump: PLEASE!” Mainly, I assumed there was no way in hell I was getting in. While the doors opened at noon the day of, I kept seeing footage of rabid Trump stans staking their claim in line since 10 am the day before, camping out overnight in that grim, junk-riddled corridor near Penn Station like they were waiting for Taylor Swift. And the line only grew and grew, to the point that I obsessively checked Twitter to see if I should even bother. But fuck it—at the very least I could giggle at vendor tables usually dedicated to hocking “I love NY” tat now selling T-shirts featuring Trump working a McDonald’s drive-thru and gawk at the freak show of misfits and whackos that this rally was bound to attract (I put myself in this category).

Taking the subway from Union Square to Herald Square, I peered around my N train car. Who among us was also heading to MAGA mecca? No defiantly worn MAGA hats. Nobody blasting a tinny version of “Y.M.C.A.” on their phone. Nobody shouting “Comrade Kamala!” Then, I saw them. Two thirty-something white dudes, a demographic I’d describe as Tim Dillon fans from my experience at multiple shows, sat down adjacent to me, one of whom slipped a red MAGA hat out of his pants pocket, placing it still semi-hidden next to his thigh as if too timid to risk a train confrontation. It wasn’t until we exited at 34^th that he had the balls to put it on. Pussy. Not wanting to stalk this duo to MSG, I stopped to check my phone and got offered to attend church with a Mormon instead. Tempting. But I already had an appointment at another kind of church as a mass of those parishioners decked in multicolored MAGA hats hurried down 32^nd Street. I followed, past a dump truck acting as a blockade and many, many NYPD officers, visibly amused by working this peculiar beat. The east side of 32^nd contained a frenzy of fervent psychosis: a group of Chinese people chanting, “Fight, fight, fight!” in Trump’s honor, holding a flag emblazoned with “Trump 2024: I’ll Be Back. Take Two.” Next to the text stood Trump dressed as…a gladiator? What the fuck. In the center of the street, a small man in a suit and a rubber Trump mask high-fived passersby with a homemade sign slung around his neck. In thin, multicolored pen, it read, “America’s Last Hope is Trump.”

The dashing crowd stopped. Oh, shit. What was a quick jaunt past the gauntlet of batshittery was now at a standstill with the masses spanning the width of 32^nd street. A squat man in a flannel shirt from Nassau County jabbered with a fellow Long Island woman with stringy black hair and heavy eyeliner furiously vaping. She worried repeatedly whether the Secret Service would take away her vape. “That’s why I brought one that’s almost dead,” said Nassau County, over and over. Elsewhere, a gaggle of nearby bros attempted to get some rousing chants going: “Who are we going to vote for?” “TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP! YEAAAAAAAH! WHOOOOOOOO! USA USA USA!” Even if I broke down completely in a panicked flop sweat, there was nowhere to run, fenced in by metal barricades I couldn’t high hurtle without ending up as a viral X video retweeted by Elon Musk.

I had no choice but to wait, hoping that the drone buzzing worryingly overhead was the NYPD, not something more nefarious, and anticipate: What would I find inside (if I even made it)? Would the rally be closer to WrestleMania than Hitler’s Madison Square Garden Nazi rally, a false equivalency made by Hillary Clinton (every time Hillary talks another Democrat switches party affiliation) and others in the media? Would it feel like a furious mob? A sausage-fest? A conservative camp spectacle? A mega-church revival? A cult gathering with a captivating Jim Jones-like leader at the helm? Would I be convinced? I’m open to anything! The answer to all of these questions, as I discovered after sitting in the nosebleed seats for about six hours, was…not exactly. Despite all the scare-mongering analysis in other publications about the dark, menacing rally, a “desecration of Madison Square Garden,” the lasting impression I had was one I didn’t expect at all. TrumpaMania, despite all the special guests and pumped-up walk-on (and off) songs, was boring. Really fucking boring. Excruciatingly boring. Painfully boring. So painfully boring that the tedium felt like it zapped my life force for days afterward. And the worst, dullest offender was Trump himself.

Tiresome was not what I was promised when passing under a ginormous monitor with its brightness yanked up to 11 blaring a black-and-white photo of Trump, raising his fist, on a circular background with a spinning American flag and a tagline: “Dream BIG Again!” (A hilariously snake oil salesy tagline I much prefer to Make America Great Again). I should note “Dream BIG Again!” was not the only fresh copywriting. The campaign also tried out “Trump Will Fix It!” which recalls mega-pedo Jimmy Savile’s famous (and now infamous) BBC show Jimmy’ll Fix It. I’ll assume this comparison to a known nonce was not purposeful.

I found my tippy-tippy-top seat, which gave me a comically limited view of the stage and speakers, as former New York mayor and Bloody Mary enthusiast Rudy Giuliani staggered, stiff-legged, onstage. Yes, this means I missed the biggest headline-producing speaker: comedian and Kill Tony host Tony Hinchcliffe. Most of us weren’t even sitting down by the time he came onstage, opening for live American flag painter Scott LoBaido, who sells paintings of Kamala mauling and munching a bald eagle while a mushroom cloud erupts in the background (I want one). Now, as a standup comedy fanatic, I’ve never really been a fan of Hinchcliffe, who, to me, always seems like offense without the art (He’s no Doug Stanhope). Though I can’t speak from experience, it surely is a dubious decision to book a roast comic for a presidential campaign. It’s as if Trump and Harris are locked in a battle for who can run the worst campaign and frankly, it’s a very tight race. Who would you rather endure—Hinchcliffe or Liz Cheney? It’s a toss-up for me. Luckily, though, I didn’t have to listen to either, just Rudy hollering, his dentures clacking, questions like an old man terrorizing a Brooklyn coffee shop: “What the heck does Adams know about baseball?!!” or, my favorite, “What’s happened to GOD?! We don’t pray to him anymore?!”

Though tickled by Rudy’s curious presence (Trump hasn’t dumped his bankrupt ass yet? Even as he’s giving over his NYC penthouse and Lauren Bacall’s Mercedes to two election workers in Georgia? Really?), my perverse glee diminished, fading a little bit more and a little bit more with each new bore: Michael Harry-O Harris from Death Row Records, Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller, Byron Donalds, Elise Stefanik, Mike Johnson, various Trump family members, Dana White, Steve Witkoff…who the fuck is that? They all had vaguely the same messaging: Trump loves you, Trump took a bullet for you like Christ on the cross, blah blah. At some point, it all blended together like the horn toots of the adults in Charlie Brown. I looked to my right; the bro seated next to me was head-bobbing, drifting asleep, only popping up during applause breaks to drowsily clap. I understood.

A rote political rally like a second RNC was clearly not what the Trump campaign intended. The stage was set up on the floor in the round. No matter how many patriotic banners they slung over its side, it mimicked the position of a wrestling ring, which was perfectly paired with the wrestling-like announcer introducing the speakers. This was not out of place given the sheer prominence of pro-wrestling in the campaign, from Trump stomping onstage to the Undertaker’s morose theme song to Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt to pieces at the RNC. All of which is appropriate for a man who has lived his entire life like a loathsome, antagonistic wrestling heel. It was Hulk Hogan himself who provided the energetic high point of the rally as he marched onstage to his song “Real American,” sporting his trademark ketchup-and-mustard-colored feather boa, red sunglasses, and platinum Barbie hair stuffed under a bandana, clutching an American flag. I whooped and cheered. Casting aside the flag, Hulk struggled, yanking his shirt collar pathetically, to rip off his HulkaMania shirt, revealing a Trump/Vance one. I cheered louder. “Let me tell you something, TRUMPAMANIACS!” he growled. “Welcome to the house Hulkamania built!” He’s not wrong—it wouldn’t be Madison Square Garden without the Hulk. It was just missing Vince McMahon (Sure, he’s canceled but would anyone there care? I wouldn’t!).

Though this was the trash aesthetic hitting its absolute apex, the rally’s intention as a powerful, blow-out spectacle failed. Even if Trump might be a natural P.T. Barnum-like showman, the others, well, aren’t. Any moment of trash ecstasy was rapidly zapped by the next excruciating speaker like Dr. Phil following Hulk by droning on and on about bullies while the biggest bully in the country with the loudest megaphone stood offstage waiting for his crowning moment. Then, there were the lame walk-on songs. Trump Campaign dweeb Dan Scavino really milked his Metallica “Enter Sandman” moment, Byron Donalds chose another pro-wrestler John Cena’s “The Time Is Now,” and, perhaps the funniest, Eric and Lara Trump went with Europe’s “The Final Countdown,” apparently not recognizing its connection to Gob Bluth’s disastrous magic act in Arrested Development (I always thought of Jr. as Gob).

Sometimes what was being said, though, was so goddamn loony that it cut through the dullness. No, not all the vile and insulting things you’ve read about for the past week. Truthfully, those quotes barely registered to me, fading into the background like a xenophobic white noise machine. Instead, my ears picked up when I heard observations like podcast host and sleep demon victim Tucker Carlson’s Zyn-infused description of Trump’s heroic takeover of Madison Square Garden like the life of the party being kicked out of a bar:

“And yet he’s here, it’s like getting thrown out of a bar. And you think to yourself, “Well, all my friends are in the bar.” And you approach the door and there’s the bouncer like, “You’re not allowed in here.” But from behind the bouncer, you hear the cheers of your friends, “Come on in,” and the bouncer hangs his head in shame. He’s embarrassed that he’s working for the man trying to keep the most popular person out of the bar. And that’s Donald Trump back in the city that produced him with no embarrassment at all in a room full of his friends.”

Huh?! Well, maybe he was kicked out of the bar for a good reason!

Or Cantor Fitzgerald CEO and Elon Musk’s co-secretary of DOGE (Department of Governmental Efficiency) Howard Lutnick who waxed poetic about the lack of income tax at the turn of the century. Yes, that turn of the century. You realize the American economy in 2024 is a bit different from 1897, right? RIGHT?! Of the entire rogues’ gallery of frizzled lunatics, Lutnik struck me as the goddamn craziest. Which is saying something. Previously, I only knew Lutnick for his experiences on 9/11, losing 658 workers in the attacks and striving like hell to provide for family members and survivors. That sheer level of PTSD does account for his screeched outburst, “We must elect Donald J. Trump president because we must crush JIHAAAAAD!” which drove the teens sitting in front of me to turn to their 40-something dads and ask what the hell “jihad” is. However, how do you rectify Lutnick’s time-warp straight out of Bush/Cheney’s 2004 reelection campaign with Tulsi Gabbard’s (I believe rightful) criticism of the Cheneys’ involvement in Kamala Harris’s campaign? Or RFK Jr. defining Trump as anti war machine? These perspectives don’t make any sense together. The same goes for the crowd’s reaction, which was universally cheering for all of them.

Some of this may have to do with the fact that the crowd simply liked to chant at any opportunity and with any catchphrase as if they were part of the live Stand audience of one of my favorite comedy podcasts, Legion of Skanks. However, instead of stumping for Luis J. Gomez with a rousing LU-IS! LU-IS! LU-IS!, it’s TAMPON TIM! TAMPON TIM! TAMPON TIM! TAMPON TIM! USA! USA! USA! USA! ELON! ELON! ELON! ELON! Though this sounds douchey as hell and I have already referenced a lot of bros in this essay, that would be an incorrect categorization of the crowd. While I could squint and see the make-up-plastered faces of some Trumpettes at the front of the stage, the crowd was different than the pasty old white hoards I anticipated—more diverse, in both race and ethnicity, as well as age. Younger women. Entire families with toddlers in their arms. A whole lot of Jewish people, including the guy sitting to my left texting in Hebrew and another Hasidic man whose curls popped out of his MAGA hat. And everyone I talked to was also quite nice, a bunch of enthusiastic happy idiots who acted as if they were attending a concert rather than what many outside the building were defining as a hate rally (I overheard a few conversations about attending other Trump rallies as if they were following him around like a favorite band). This has made me bristle in the week afterward hearing those who weren’t there decide what garbage monsters these people are en masse. I’m from Western Pennsylvania and have witnessed deeply depressing, crappy, boarded-up towns that our government has abandoned, no matter the party. The truth is all of us below a certain tax bracket are fucked and some haven’t yet realized that reaching out for Donald Trump’s assistance, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is not going to save them. I have some sympathy for that position. Maybe it feels good to put faith in something, no matter how noxious and obnoxious. That being said, there were a few holy-crap moments when the crowd’s whoops and wails turned menacing, in particular during Trump’s speech itself when he suggested frying migrants who kill American citizens or imprisoning activists who burn American flags, both of which garnered blood-thirsty roars. I mean, jumping Jesus—American flag burning?! Get me out of here. Get me out of here now.

This nagging urge to flee kicked in almost immediately after the amusing absurdity of Trump’s sauntering entrance, the main event, set to his fellow Bible salesman Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” I assumed the track was being played from a recording until an errant note blasted over the recognizable vocals. I strained my eyes. Lee was, in fact, onstage, booming out a line here or there as Trump smooched Melania. “FREEEEEEEE!!!!” This was as good as it got as Trump wallowed in a gratingly monotone voice, boasting about not needing a teleprompter like Harris. Would a teleprompter have helped his delivery? Holy shit! Get it back! Instead, he switched between his predictable prepared remarks—the same old schtick we’ve heard since 2016—and meandering stories about watching Space X’s Starship booster returning to Earth, letting RFK Jr. go wild on health, except for that “liquid GOLD,” and implying his father was not in heaven with his mother, pausing twice to show propaganda videos of migrants taking over apartment buildings and beating up cops. If that wasn’t enough, he threatened to introduce every single member of Congress sitting in the VIP section (NOOO!!!). Mercifully, he, then, trailed off. That relief was short-lived as, to my unending horror, he returned to the VIP section and did basically that, chattering at Matt Gaetz and Tommy Tuberville. It was so boring that my body hurt. My back ached, my legs felt sore, and my entire mental stability dangled precariously by a thread. Everything within me was screaming to leave. Leave. Move. Just go. Leave. Get up.

I wasn’t the only one. People walked out in a steady stream almost as soon as Trump began. So many people left that I was one of three in my row by the end, with entire rows below me emptied out. Sure, some people may have had trains to catch but not everyone. The rest likely had a life to live beyond this torture. I watched all these escapees with palpable envy. I also wanted to go. Badly. So badly. But I endured—no, not for you Filthy Dreams readers, but for me. I wanted to see his fist-pumping “Y.M.C.A.” dance with my own eyes. Would he shuffle in perfect time? Would he add his new golf swing move?

In all that I’ve studied Trump in the last eight years, I never fully understood how goddamn punishingly boring the man could be. Love him or hate him, on TV, he comes off as a once-in-a-lifetime charismatic American carnival barker. Not so in person. Gate-gate or Hot Dog-gate, the Seinfeldian farce at the center of my TrumpaMania experience, was so much more memorable. In fact, the entire TrumpaMania came off like Trump organized his own funeral, and then delivered his own eulogy. And it wasn’t even a good one. His narcissistic long-windedness, paired with a pathological lack of self-awareness about the crowd’s disinterest, makes you want to tiptoe away as fast as possible. Which I did, leaping up once the concluding music kicked in. To my disappointment, it was not the Village People, but an opera singer’s live bellowing rendition of “New York, New York.” Perfect in many ways, but not enough for me to stay, sprinting past Roger Stone on the way out of the building.

Next time just hit “Ave Maria” on the playlist and sway.