I (Almost) Saw Donald Trump in Tucson, Arizona
A first-hand account of my first-ever attempt at going to a political rally.
Last week, I tried to go see former President Trump speak in Tucson. It was a very interesting experience: I had a ticket but couldn’t get in because there was such a massive crowd—one of the biggest lines I’ve ever seen.
I’ve never gone to a political rally or a live event with a president (current or former) before, so it was a rare opportunity. Or that’s what I thought until I found out just how crowded it was.
The event info said the doors opened at 11:00 am, so I drove there right at 11:00, but there were thousands of people everywhere, and all the parking was completely full.
All of downtown was way, way more packed than I could have anticipated. There were cop cars everywhere, some streets were blocked off, and yellow “police line do not cross” tape was hung in front of multiple buildings.
People were all over the place, on the sidewalk and in the streets, and every single garage and parking lot was totally full or roped off.
I didn’t expect any of this at all, mainly because Tucson is (at least allegedly) an extremely liberal and democratic enclave in an otherwise fairly conservative state.
But as I was trying to figure out where to go and what to do, I checked Twitter/X and saw people who had been sleeping out on the sidewalk since the night before, like Black Friday shoppers camping out in front of Best Buy to get the best deals.
I finally gave up on parking near the venue and had to park several blocks away and then walk for about 15 minutes. The line out the door at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall just kept going and going, and it took me a long time to find the end of it.
It went on and on, twisting and turning, snaking around many buildings and city blocks. It was ridiculous how many people there were, trying to crowd into an extremely tiny venue.
Finally, I found the end of the line, and by then, it looked totally hopeless that I’d have a chance to get into the building. I was 95% sure the building would be full by the time I got to the front, but I decided: “I’ll give it two hours. I can afford to spend or waste two hours attempting to see a former president of the United States.”
Here are some of the conclusions I reached during my first-ever attempt to wait in line to see an American president.
The people were really nice.
The first impression I got standing in line was that everybody I met was really nice. They were friendly, smiling, cheerful, and in a great mood. An electric buzz of optimism crackled in the air. There was a tangible feeling of excitement.
That was kind of strange: I expected people to be very annoyed at the massive line or at having to wait for so long in the hot sun. Surprisingly, I didn’t hear a single complaint: people were laughing, joking, and having a great time… the entire time.
I never heard a cross word the whole time I stood there, no matter how hot and sweaty we got.
Right before I got there, near a crosswalk, there were three police officers standing by a stop light, talking. A bunch of men near me stopped and told them, “Thank you for your service,” and shook their hands. They were very kind in return.
I was trying to imagine how this would look at a different kind of political rally, one where the people in attendance say things like “defund the police” and “f*ck the police.”
I was very happy not to see any of that here, and I’m sure the law enforcement officers were as well.
The people were incredibly… normal.
Again, having never gone to a live political event before, I had no idea what to expect. Especially with all the press being so negative about Trump and “Trump supporters,” I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but I was very cautious.
If you’re foolish enough to believe the crazy political hyperbole and nonsense CNN or MSNBC tells you, Trump voters are all rednecks and hillbillies who are poor, racist, fentanyl-addicted, toothless hags with a single-digit I.Q. Yet I didn’t see anything like that whatsoever.
Instead, I saw old folks, young folks, children, and babies. I saw Americans of every shape, size, and color: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian, people who were thick, thin, short, and tall (and one orthodox Jew). There were bikers, cowboys, soldiers, blue-collar laborers, and white-collar office workers.
Basically, there was only one kind of person I didn’t see there: angry blue-haired leftists and the “Free Palestine” types. The women here looked like stereotypical, traditional American women: most had long hair and were very feminine. The men looked like stereotypical, traditional American men, often with facial hair and a beer belly.
Also, there was no ambiguity about anybody’s gender; very few people wore COVID masks, and nobody talked about their pronouns or any of that. People mostly looked like my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
It was all so normal. It really reminded me of my childhood. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, if anybody had asked us “how we identify,” we wouldn’t have even understood the question. If you really pressed us hard for an answer, we would have simply said, “Uhh, I’m an American?” …and that would have been the end of it.
Funny enough, I even heard one man in the crowd tell another man that he wanted to call his friend, who was an illegal immigrant, to come out and stand in line.
“He can’t vote because he’s illegal. But if he could, he’d probably vote for Trump, I think,” he said.
There was SO MUCH merchandise.
Aside from all the food and drinks vendors sold (mostly sodas, bottled water, and iced tea, which makes sense for people standing in the ridiculously hot summer sun), there was an unbelievable amount of Trump-themed merchandise for sale.
People were buying it, selling it, and wearing it. Say what you want about Trump himself, but the man sure knows how to build a brand. I was bobbing along in a sea filled with what looked like a million floating red hats. I even heard women unapologetically refer to themselves as “MAGA Girls.”
Vendors came by to those standing in line, hawking all kinds of goods, like hats, shirts, pins, teddy bears, posters, and flags.
Most of the people there were already wearing “MAGA” hats, so it kind of seemed silly to try selling more Trump merchandise to them, but many of them actually did buy more.
Personally, I didn’t wear anything political like a shirt or hat (I don’t own anything like that). I just wore jeans and a solid-colored T-shirt with nothing printed on it. I didn’t necessarily want to blend in and look just like everybody else, but I also didn’t necessarily want to stand out.
There was active political engagement and activism happening.
There were volunteers and election workers talking to people in line, registering them to vote (if they weren’t already registered), or updating their address on their voter registration if it was outdated.
This was really smart: I hadn’t thought of this before. I was registered to vote, of course, and I’ve voted in every single election since I was first able to in 2003, but if I had moved houses recently, I don’t know that I’d have remembered to update my address.
I saw a few people update their addresses. It went like this:
“Are you registered to vote?” a volunteer would ask.
“Yes, I am,” someone would say, annoyed at the audacity of asking this question to someone standing in line for a political event and who is, therefore, extremely likely to be already registered to vote.
“At your current address?” they’d insist, digging deeper.
“Oh, you know what? I don’t think so… I moved last year. Should I update that?”
“If you want to vote in this election, yes, you’ll have to.”
“Gimme the clipboard,” they’d say.
This was a really good idea on the part of the volunteers. I salute them for being smart and finding a target-rich environment like this, where the people they need to engage with are a captive audience.
I signed a petition to get a candidate on the ballot in 2026 to run against a politician I especially dislike who will be (at least it seems for now) running unopposed. I felt good about that.
There were angry protesters, but not like I expected.
I know that all political events attract their fair share of protesters or critics, and I was expecting some, but not in the way that I encountered them.
I saw a woman holding a “Harriz/Walz” sign walking across the street from us. She wasn’t rude, and she didn’t say anything.
I have respect for that. She didn’t bother me at all; what she did was perfectly fine. That is what I was expecting, and I support that.
What I didn’t expect, though, was what the few remaining protesters said.
One person drove past us in a car with the windows rolled down, holding out a middle finger and screaming: “F*ck you! You’re all Russian assets!” or something like that.
(What?)
People in line just laughed.
Another time, a man and a woman walked by, shouting, “Go back to Russia.”
(Double what?)
Two women walked by, with one holding a sign that read:
“F*ck Trump F*ck Trump F*ck Trump F*ck Trump F*ck Trump F*ck Trump F*ck Trump”
She shouted something angry and unintelligible while the other woman screamed:
“F*ck you! Bans off our bodies! You should all get a vasectomy!”
(Triple what?)
At least half the women in line were women, so… she’s saying they should get a vasectomy? Huh? Once again, people in line just laughed and shook their heads.
I have no idea how on earth these women thought screaming profanities at the men, women, and many children who were politely standing on a sidewalk was going to change anyone’s mind or alter the way they vote.
(Also, I won’t write here what one man said in regards to what he thought about getting that particular woman pregnant… but it got HUGE laughs.)
It was dangerously hot and disorganized.
The craziest part was having to stand in the hottest part of the day in the desert heat for several hours, not knowing if we would be able to get into the building or not.
I brought a small black umbrella with me so I could stay shaded the entire time, but even then, my phone kept saying, “iPhone needs to cool down,” and the screen would go black.
I wish there had been better communication between the people in charge, whoever that was.
There should have been some sort of messaging service: email, text, or posts on Twitter/X to let people know the status. The whole time, we were just talking in line:
“Do you think we’ll get in?”
“Probably not.”
“Should we even wait in line?”
“They haven’t made any announcements yet, so I don’t know.”
“Oh well.”
I don’t know who to blame: the Trump campaign, the City of Tucson, Pima County, the U.S Secret Service, or all the above, but it was very sloppily done and forcing that many people to stand in so much heat for an indeterminate amount of time was downright dangerous.
One man told me his wife had to get help from paramedics because she got heatstroke. I saw on Twitter/X that this happened to at least 40 people.
This is foolish and should not happen again. It is easily preventable with better planning and communication.
I’ve never seen such a long line in person before.
I’ve heard that the term “blockbuster” refers to the time the movie “Jaws” was initially released. It was so popular that it “busted the block” and had people standing in line wrapped around multiple streets and buildings trying to get in.
This event was a blockbuster. I’ve never seen anything like it before in person, and it was truly a sight to see.
(Note: having said that, I will once again state, as I did before, that crowd size is NOT a reliable indicator of political performance. I posted about this event on Twitter/X, and two women immediately started arguing with each other about this. One said the huge line proved he was going to win the election; the other said he couldn’t fill a bigger stadium, so that proved he was going to lose. Ugh. Stop it!)
The weirdest part about all of this is how long it took to finally learn that the venue was too full to get in. In my case, it took two entire hours. The people who were in line before me (but who still didn’t make it) had to wait even longer. WHY?!
In the end, I learned three lessons about political events like this.
#1: Getting access to a presidential event is, weirdly, free.
I guess this shouldn’t be a big surprise, but it kind of was. I RSVP’d to it online, and it immediately said, “Here’s your ticket.” It was that simple. No credit card needed, no payment, no verification, no driver’s license, no identity check, no background check, nothing.
That was surprising (and probably not a good thing, in my honest opinion).
#2: They oversold it, bigly.
I was afraid of this, but I couldn’t get a straight answer anywhere. I had a “ticket” to get in, but did that mean I was guaranteed to get in? Did I have a seat reserved? Would they turn away other people who didn’t have a ticket so I could get in? Was it capped at the number of seats they had in the venue?
There was so little information anywhere, and I had no clue. That’s part of why I decided to go in the first place: just to find out how an event managed by the U.S. Secret Service works.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, I couldn’t get in because it was insanely oversold. If I had to guess, my best estimate was that there were 10,000 people in line. The venue can hold around 2,300 people, so that means if my estimate is right, four times more people stood in line and didn’t get in than those who actually did.
Also, did every person in line have a “ticket?” If so, that kind of defeats the entire purpose of having a ticket in the first place (which is why I use scare quotes here).
A “ticket” to an event like this really isn’t a ticket at all. That’s weird.
#3: If I want to do this again in the future, I’ll need to take at least an entire day off.
This is annoying and hard for a lot of people to pull off. It’s clearly a whole-day event, and if you want to get in, you have to show up early… really early. Not just when the doors open but many hours before.
I heard people in line say they were taking time off from work, either just the afternoon or the entire day. This was encouraging because they were happy to do it. But it was also sad because the people in line before and after me wasted all that time for nothing.
Well, I say “for nothing,” but I asked a man standing next to me what he thought about that, and his answer was surprisingly optimistic.
“You know what? I don’t even care if I don’t get in. Just to be around the people and feel the energy… it’s still worth it.”
That’s an interesting perspective.
In the end, I stood in line for almost exactly two hours. At around 1:11 pm, a police officer finally came to my part of the line and “officially” told us that the venue was full.
That was frustrating, but again, I expected it. I’m still sad, though, for the people in front of me who stood in line even longer than I did and still didn’t get in.
When it was all said and done, I went back to my office, sat down on the floor in front of a giant fan, drank about a gallon of water, sopped up the incredible amount of sweat all over my body, and writhed in pain after standing on the hard pavement for two hours in the hot sun.
In a sense, I don’t like the way it turned out. It was a big waste of time.
But I’m still proud that I did it. I met fellow Americans. I got involved in my first-ever live political event. I also (hopefully) helped someone get one step closer to unseating a horrible politician in Arizona who should have never been elected in the first place.
I participated in democracy. That was a good feeling.
I encourage everyone else to do the same, regardless of who you’re voting for.
At first when you said there was a huge line I was picturing standing outside the venue. Holy guacamole. That WAS a huge line. Thanks for sharing your experience. I will probably never go to a political function like that.