“They’re talking about jobs, so-called ‘reclaim and fix’ what the coal companies tore up, but none of that ever happened. They’re using the ruined mountains for military practice. They said they couldn’t find nowhere else better than Raleigh County mining sites that resembled Iraqi terrain. They’re landing cargo planes and taking off, practicing dropping stuff out the back. I was going to go up there and hang up a great big plywood sign: ‘Iraq: Five miles’ [laughs]. I don’t like it. I really don’t. People say, ‘Well, at least they’re using it for something.’
“I think they want everybody out of this valley. See, there’s seams of coal underneath here, underneath this river, that goes all the way to Chesapeake down past Charleston. I’ve seen them strip a big valley like this in Pennsylvania. They gutted it. I mean, they gutted it. They started consolidating schools. Then they started shutting post offices down. No schools, no post offices. Then you look at Whitesville. You got to go all the way down to Charleston from Whitesville to get anything.
“Trump will get elected. I’m for it. I said it from the beginning, when everybody said I was crazy. People in America like his attitude. We’re tired of being broke. People’s tired of bull crap. Jobs never should have never left here. They should have stayed in America. He’s a businessman, and mostly everything in the world now depends on some kind of business. We need to keep our butts at home, stay out of these wars. That’s the sort of thing you’d have to watch with him, is can he keep himself calm? Control of his bipolar. That might be what we need, is a good bipolar president [laughs]. He says it like it is. If he says it, he’s probably going to do it one way or another, or try to. He don’t hold nothing back. That’s for sure. He probably knows people all over the place. Can make some kind of jobs happen.
“But they need to quit talking about that border wall shit. I never did like this. The drugs are going to get here from somewhere, one way or another. We don’t need a damn wall. Get along with the people. Bring them and build more. Help us build the country. They want to work too. Let’s put them to work. Put everybody to work. You look at all the problems it’s caused in California right now—it’s over that damn wall. We need to just work this out on that. We need to get that straightened out so people ain’t fighting in the street.
“And Trump should stop calling them scoundrels. Everybody’s not a scoundrel. And them people are desperate. You become a bit of a scoundrel when you get desperate, whether you are or not. You get hungry, you’re going to grab that donut, if you can get it.”
* * *
West Virginia’s flip from blue to red in presidential elections did not happen overnight, but one night in particular has come to symbolize that transformation. On October 31, 2000, the actor Charlton Heston spoke to a packed house at the armory in Beckley, the seat of Raleigh County. Speaking on behalf of the National Rifle Association, Heston urged West Virginia to buck history and vote for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. “Mr. Gore has the guts of a guppy,” Heston told an audience full of miners and their families. “If Al Gore is elected, he will have the power to hammer your gun rights…. Freedom has never seen greater peril or needed you more urgently to come to her defense.” That week, the state supported the Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 1984.
If people outside of West Virginia have heard anything about Raleigh County, it probably isn’t about Heston’s visit to Beckley, but about the nearby town of Oceana, the subject of the acclaimed 2013 documentary, Oxyana, a chronicle of the area’s opioid epidemic. Everyone in the area talks about the drugs. This includes a Trump supporter and former industrial engineer named Lenny Massimino, proprietor of one of the few non–chain businesses still open in Beckley. When I stopped by his auto parts store one afternoon, he pulled a stool up to the counter and we spoke as a television in the corner played Fox News.
“When I met my wife at West Virginia University in 1979, this was a great place to raise a family. If you told me back then there’d be drug a problem in southern West Virginia, I’d say, ‘Son, you need to go back to New York.’ Oh, they were going to drink and raise hell, pot smoking, but hell, that’s everywhere. But the oxycodone, the heroin, and all that … It’s bad. You see it everyday, they walk in here, blurry eyed. A lot of older people, too. They’ve lost where they’re going, so they end up with drugs.
“The six counties in southern West Virginia are in a depression. Not in a recession, a depression. The base everything was built on got knocked out. Nobody is working. Nobody’s got any money. There’s no people. It’s what happens when the EPA tells you, ‘Shut every coal-fired power plant down in the United States.’ If you want other [sorts of business] to come in, you have to do it slowly. You just can’t turn off a switch. They talk about climate change. The only one that controls the thermostat on this good green earth of ours is the guy upstairs.
“Business is terrible, terrible. At one time, I had five stores, had four stores last April, before I closed my plywood store, right in the midst of coal country. A lot of coal mines are taking Chapter 11, Chapter 7. They used to be good accounts for us. You lose business you did monthly with them, and you lose all the people that worked for them, plus the money they owed you. It’s been devastating. You can just see the traffic on Route 3, the main drag through West Virginia. There’s hardly any cars moving. You go into Walmart, you can park in the first row! Used to be you had to pack a lunch, you’d have to park so far back. A lot of the hotels and restaurants regain a bit during the summertime because we’re a midway point for travelers going down to the beach and stuff. That helps. Plus, we get a lot of business from travelers breaking down.
“I was a Democrat until I turned fifty-nine years old [in 2008]. Voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980. I think this year things need to be shook up. The establishments have gone way too far. All they worry about is K Street, their power structure, how to keep the counties around Washington, DC wealthy. Trump’s a power person, but not a power broker in Washington. People are sick and tired of lobbyists, special interests. It’s just a paid game. Small business, small people can’t afford to hire a lobbyist.
“What you’re seeing is an angry America. You’re seeing people voting now for Trump that hasn’t voted forever. They’re not complacent any more. Say he does win, and he can’t get done what he wants to get done, then you’re going to see another like him. We’re tired of working our tails off for nothing. We’re tired of all these promises on health insurance, and all you are doing is paying out more money. Your deductibles are sky-high, your insurance costs are sky-high. My wife is sixty-four and we got to buy maternity coverage. Come on, get real.
“Trump knows where we got to go. You know the old saying, nobody ever got a job from a poor man. What we need is an LBJ in Trump’s clothing. LBJ knew every skeleton in Washington. He said, ‘If you don’t do what I want you to do, I’ll let them know what you did.’
“We were talking about drugs. None of Trump’s kids have drug issues. Those kids had a boatload of money available to them. He raised them right. Good men raise good children. He’s a mouthy New Yorker, and if you know anybody from New York, they all got a line of bullshit [laughs]. That’s the way they are. They’ll argue with you about who’s going to pay dinner. You know, they’re just argumentative people. He’s that way. You attack him, he’s going to attack you back twice as hard, and be nasty and make you feel like a heel.
“I really got angry the other day watching the protests [at a Trump rally] in California. I’m not angry at them protesting. That’s our rights. But when you are in America, son, don’t protest under a frickin’ Mexican flag. Trump explains things in the big picture, you know, ‘build a wall.’ I’m the great grandson of immigrants that came through Ellis Island. When they came here, there was no Italian flag flying over the house, okay? You weren’t allowed to speak Italian in my grandmother’s house. She would swear at me in Italian, but she wanted you to speak the language of this country, okay? That’s the
way it’s supposed to be. A melting pot, you become an American. My father and uncles fought in WWII. They weren’t Italians fighting other Italians. They were Americans, okay? We’re losing that. Don’t protest under a Mexican flag in America.
“We lost our basic industries in this country. We lost the industrial sector. Textiles. You can’t find a shirt made in the United States anymore. If you do find one, you can’t afford it. New York City, all them apartment buildings used to be textile plants, weaving and making shirts and making cloth. You had a rag market in New York. Manufacturing, boy, you got to look awful close to find it. The North Carolina furniture factories. The cotton mills that was down in the Carolinas. The steel mills in Pittsburgh. Where did they go?
“What bugs me about losing manufacturing, getting your hands dirty is looked down upon. When I grew up we weren’t saying, ‘Oh, God this is dirty, terrible!’ We were saying, ‘Hot damn, daddy works tomorrow!’ And he made a good living and was able to educate his kids, was able to save, okay? Was able to have a good retirement for himself. Americans shouldn’t be ashamed to get their hands dirty. The dirt that gets under your fingernails, my dad would tell me, is clean dirt. You worked for it and it washes off. A lot of this dirt we have in this nation is no longer clean dirt.”
Chapter Five
New Mexico
I arrived in downtown Albuquerque just as protestors began to pool outside the city’s convention center. Raucous, they flowed into the heavily policed space from downtown, where they’d marched and chanted under signs of spectrum-spanning, anti-Trump insult: “Fascist … fuck face … man baby.” Hours before the candidate was scheduled to speak, the familiar factions had arrived in force, from the exuberant Free Hug crowd, to sullen Black Bloc cadres quietly debating the security merits of bandanas versus Guy Fawkes masks. As dusk set in and the air turned cool, a thousand people chanted, sang, and laughed. A trumpeter played Mexican-flavored covers of patriotic American songs. It almost felt more like a party than a protest. Then the Trump people started showing up.
To get to the Albuquerque Convention Center, rally goers had to walk fifty yards down a narrow pathway created by waist-high metal barriers. There was no buffer between this pathway and the protestors, who filled its length like an Oscars night paparazzi line of verbal punishment. Most attendees bowed their heads and adopted a brisk pace while passing under the torrent of taunts and shouts of “Shame on you!” Some attendees returned fire, creating some tense scenes. Albuquerque police called for reinforcements from around the state before doors opened on Trump’s seven o’clock speech.
Inside the convention area, an enormous line formed alongside dozens of merch dealers anxious to clear inventory ahead of the looming end of primary season. They walked the line with Trump tie-dyes, baseball hats, and an array of anti-Hillary gear. One button, new on the market, announced a “KFC Hillary Special: 2 Fat Thighs, 2 Small Breasts … Left Wing.” While perusing these offerings, I heard the unmistakable laugh of Mark Spence, the Trump parking lot super-fan from Texas I met on a freezing morning in Racine, Wisconsin, handing out flyers with links to Paul Harvey radio monologues. He was wearing star-spangled face paint and seemed genuinely happy to see me, but apologized for having to run. The line was now moving into the building, and it was a long overnight drive to Anaheim, where Trump was speaking the following afternoon. “My father spent the last twenty years of his life in Orange County, so it has a special energy for me,” he said, flashing a big all-dentures smile.
As the back half of the line neared the metal detectors, a white protestor in his twenties entered the convention area and began screaming within shouting distance of rally goers. “You’re all fucking welfare cases!” he yelled, prowling back and forth like an enraged lion. “You just don’t want anyone else getting any! You’re all a bunch of fucking frauds! Donald Trump is a fraud!”
Only two people heckled back at the protestor, telling him to “Get a job.” They were Eldon and Theo Martinez, father and son Trump fans from the Acoma Indian Reservation. Eldon, the father, was a rancher and retired Albuquerque cop. Theo had recently completed a decade in the Army. I asked what they thought of the protest across the street.
“Half those people are illegal immigrants,” said Theo. “I went to war and fought for this? Served nine and a half years? To have them protest and call me names?”
I asked if Trump was popular on the reservation. The elder Martinez said that he was. “The black man has had eight years to turn the economy around, and he failed,” he said. “Most people believe the federal government gives Native Americans handouts. That’s not true. We provide for ourselves. We live off the land. We raise cattle. Many Acoma were farmers. But it’s dwindled. Now, most Acoma work for private businesses. The biggest issue on the reservation is unemployment. It has always been unemployment. Why not give Mr. Trump the opportunity to bring the country back? Who better than Trump, a business owner who has failed a couple of times? Who knows how to pick himself up and move forward?”
Thirty minutes later, the candidate addressed eight thousand supporters while standing in front of the New Mexico state flag. During those parts of Trump’s speech where he sounds most like a dime-store Midtown Mussolini, I found unpleasant mental exercise in imagining the flag’s symbol—an Indian sun nestled in the conquistador cross of Habsburg Spain—as a bold red ensign of an It-Happened-Here America. As he always does, Trump addressed the fascism fears of his critics with unprompted and over-compensatory claims that his campaign is a “love fest.” Between interruptions by protestors, he rolled through his primary speech, putting a border-state emphasis on the Mexican smugglers he said were driving the national heroin epidemic (as opposed to the Big Pharma painkillers responsible for nine out of ten opioid addictions). Political reporters seized on his criticism of New Mexico’s notably absent Republican governor, Susan Martinez. “Your governor has got to do a better job,” Trump said to cheers.
No matter what Trump said, the biggest news out of Albuquerque was still bound to be the Sturm und Drang on the streets. While Trump delivered his speech, protestors rushed the police line, ransacking the wares of fleeing vendors and setting one of the tables afire. With the police buffer outside the entrance in chaos, the security team directed everyone to a back exit, struggling to be heard over the theme of Space Jam, Trump’s outro music (“Y’all ready for this?”). Windows along the convention center’s escalator and pristine plant-dotted hallways revealed smoke and prowling protestors beyond the glass. George Romero fans leaving the rally must have thought of the zombie-infested parking lot outside the Dawn of the Dead shopping mall. Apprehension competed with post-rally jubilation. I heard one man say, “Well, I can cross that off my bucket list. All that’s left is going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.”
As the crowd dispersed onto the city’s sidewalks, some rally goers waded toward the protest zone, which by now was encroaching the perimeter of the convention center. The night filled with the sounds of racially charged shouting matches. “Go back to Mexico!” “The border is that way!” “Come at me, bro!” “Where’s that white boy that said that?” In the streets, the protest rolled by in the full flower of Western car culture: a parade of tricked-out trucks with thirty-six-inch rims, revved engines, and burned rubber as girls in tight tops rode the sun roofs waving Mexican flags and screaming “Fuck Trump!” A few trucks blasted rapper Nipsey Hussle’s campaign anthem, “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump).”
I sat on the steps of a 7-Eleven at Fourth Street and Copper Avenue and drank a cup of coffee. A few feet away, a white Trump fan in his late thirties silently took in the acrid and acrimonious scene. He was Joe Sookov, a paramedic and recent Albuquerque transplant from Nevada. He shook his head and gestured toward the street. “This is what happens when you have a challenge to the establishment and there’s a forty-six percent Hispanic population,” he said. “As soon as my kids finish high school, I’m moving to Arizona. Sheriff Joe runs a tight county. The Hispanics are, uh, a little mo
re in check over there.”
I finished my coffee and returned to the convention center, where clashes with police went past midnight, long after the last rally-goer had gone home to bed.
* * *
The next morning, I drove south, toward the border. During the drive, I listened to talk radio seethe over what Albuquerque police termed the previous night’s “riot.” Trump had waited until morning to comment, tweeting, “The protesters in New Mexico were thugs who were flying the Mexican flag. The rally inside was big and beautiful, but outside, criminals.” Scott Stiegler, a popular local host, was livid over the police restraint. So, too, was Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, sitting in for the nationally syndicated Glenn Beck. Clarke berated the police for not “taking the gloves off” and going on the offensive. Neither host mentioned a crucial bit of background to this restraint: a 2014 federal investigation that uncovered rampant abuse and unwarranted use of lethal force by the Albuquerque PD, resulting in a federal monitor.
I was driving toward the state’s borderlands, the site of the proposed Wall that remained the central promise and metaphor of Trump’s campaign. I stopped along the way in Truth or Consequences, a hot-springs town that renamed itself in 1950 after a popular radio and TV quiz show. Just past the exit, graffiti scrawled on a makeshift billboard declared, We Don’t Trust Hillary. Another handmade sign announced the local GOP headquarters. I entered to find a gaunt fellow named Clint Langdon seated glumly at a desk. “I’m gonna vote for him, but I don’t like him or trust him one bit,” he said of Trump. “You know who you should talk to, is Gerald LaFont, over in Elephant Butte. He’s big on Trump.”
I found the pot-bellied LaFont behind the bar at the Elephant Butte Inn. LaFont bought the hotel in 1996, banking on a steady flow of regional tourists seeking summer relief in the cool temperatures of southern New Mexico’s high desert. The big draw is Elephant Butte Lake, which in recent years has been losing water to extended drought and a water-sharing agreement with Texas. The agreement, negotiated by former governor Bill Richardson, is much resented by locals. “Why did Richardson sign it? Because he’s Mexican!” Clint Langdon told me back in Truth or Consequences.
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