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Hundreds of supporters of President Trump entered a high school gymnasium on Monday and began slamming their new enemy: the chief correspondent of CNN's White House.
"Fake News Jim!" They sang loudly to Jim Acosta when a woman confronted him near his seat in the quill and that he was positioned in front of a camera for a live shot.
"Go home, Jim!" They added later – a mockery that seemed particularly threatening when she was targeting a journalist with a Hispanic family name and a father who fled Cuba from Fidel Castro.
These are tense moments. But soon after, Acosta walked to the metal barricade separating the media from the angry horde gathered at Donald Trump's last rally. He posed for selfies, first with a kind woman who seemed to sincerely want one, then with others who seemed more eager to share moments ironically on social media.
Then something even stranger happened: Acosta started signing autographs. A piece of paper here, a sign of country there. Even the bill of a hat "Make America Great Again". Eventually, one of his most persistent rowdies – a young man with a long, unkempt beard, wearing a MAGA cap back and a MAGA flag as a cloak – hired Acosta in a friendly conversation. At the end of the exchange, the Trump fan begged Acosta for a shoutout on the air.
"I think it helps them to calm down," Acosta replied when asked why he was indulging in the same people who were harassing him. "If I had to say no, it could make him more venomous."
These scenes, a few hours before the Trump event here for South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, would be remarkable any day. But they were particularly surreal and remarkable when the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been asked to leave a restaurant because she was working for Trump, called for a civil debate "without fear of prejudice." "(A rally waved a panel denouncing CNN and MSNBC, praising Fox News, Trump's favorite, and proclaiming his loyalty to Sanders:" We love Sarah. ")
The stars aligned Monday. Between the snub of Sanders' restaurant – which has followed several other government figures accosted to the restaurant – and the Democratic representative Maxine Waters encouraging such a public retreat, the line between civility and civil disobedience is a blur.
Acosta became a target for Trump supporters. His aggressive and eye-catching style at White House press conferences is an asset to the president's allies. Brad Parscale, the director of Trump's re-election campaign, even used Twitter to ask Acosta to lose his credentials.
All this, along with Trump's typically bellicose and off-screen remarks, made McMaster, the rally's guest of honor, an afterthought. The governor, who inherited the job after Trump tapped Nikki Haley as a UN ambassador, is vying for Tuesday after failing to win the majority of votes in the primary, despite the 39, Trump's long-standing approval. Trump, in his one hour speech, urged his supporters to vote for McMaster, in part, to spare Trump humiliating headlines if McMaster loses.
"Get your donkeys out tomorrow and vote," Trump told the crowd.
There was also an aside about filmmaker David Lynch, who recently congratulated Trump; Jimmy Fallon, a late-night talk show host, who recently expressed regret for a friendly interview he made with Trump during the 2016 campaign; and on ex-first lady Laura Bush, who last week wrote an editorial criticizing Trump's policy of overthrowing the children of parents who cross the border illegally. McMaster was barely mentioned after Trump's opening remarks.
This is not new. The cost of securing Trump for your big rally plays the second role of the president and his quirks. And that's what people want to attend these gatherings. They come for the show. And sometimes it means seeing (or starting) a fight with the media.
"You know I do not know much about him," said Roger Hill, a Trump supporter, about McMaster, while he was queuing for Monday's rally. "I just know that Trump approved it."
John McMaster's rival, Navy veteran and businessman John Warren, is also being ousted by Trump and his watchkeeping aide. Last week, Warren's campaign released internal polls showing him with a slight lead over McMaster – and pointed out that the numbers came from the same pollsters who worked for Trump's 2016 campaign. A Trafalgar Group poll released the same day showed McMaster with a 16-point lead, if the company's poll over the weekend showed the tightening of the race.
"Many of my supporters are going to be there because they support President Trump," Warren said at the rally on Monday. "This is not a referendum on President Trump."
But Warren did not have the theatricality of an Air Force One landing or a confrontation with CNN. He offered these thoughts in the middle of a quiet shift at Shoney's neighbor.
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