On 8 November 2016, as the world watched in shock and horror, America’s silent majority elected Donald J Trump, or “The Donald” as he is often called, the forty-fifth president of the United States of America.
When I woke up at 6am on the morning on 8 November, my first emotion was that of relief—the grueling election was finally going to be over. In September, I had begun reporting on the election focusing on Trump and his campaign, partly because of his affinity for preposterous behaviour, and partly to examine the sentiment he had undoubtedly tapped into within the American electorate.
For the first time in 70 years, both the party candidates were hosting their election night events in New York City.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Presidential nominee, and her team were ringing in the election at the Jacob Javits Centre in Manhattan. The expansive venue’s glass ceiling was touted as an emotional symbol of what the Democrat candidate was facing. I reached the centre at about 8 pm. Heavy security, several barricades and long lines of people surrounded the venue. Inside, in a grand hall, hundreds of people had gathered to watch the first exit poll predictions on CNN. Many were confidently clicking selfies and drinking beer. Outside, an entire block that had been cordoned off played host to two massive screens, which were broadcasting MSNBC’s election coverage; various food trucks; and a speaker’s stage—a set-up for the various speakers who came out intermittently, to encourage the crowd and cheer Clinton on. Hundreds were gathered here as well—the Clinton campaign had opened its doors to anyone interested to attend.
Not long after I arrived, the excitement began to turn into apprehension. People watched in disbelief when the exit polls showed Trump leading or tied with Clinton in crucial battleground states—first in Florida, which he went on to win, and then in Virginia, which he would eventually lose. People stood silently, hugging their friends and partners, watching the screens with somber expressions. Clinton’s New York win elicited brief and subdued cheers. After news networks declared that Trump had taken Ohio, another state in play, a steady trickle of attendees started to leave. A young girl sat by the side of the road smoking a cigarette, and nervously rocking back and forth—her face vacillated between hope and heartbreak as she watched the gap between Clinton and Trump’s electoral-college votes narrow in each crucial state. By about 10.30 pm, for the first time that night, all forecasts gave Trump a better chance at winning than Clinton. A funereal gloom had set in. Even Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq and who was speaking to the crowd, failed to lift its spirits.
I decided to head to Trump-central: the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan, barely ten minutes away by cab. As I walked out of the Javits Centre, a middle-aged white woman beside me grimaced. When I glanced sympathetically in her direction, she broke into long bouts of delirious laughter. “It’s unbelievable,” she said, over and over again. Her husband wondered aloud, “Who are these voters?” He added, “We don’t know anyone who supports Trump!” I imagined that many inside the Clinton camp were thinking the same thing. The cab driver, who was of Bangladeshi origin, asked me in disbelief how Trump was leading.
Inside the plush Hilton, the party was just beginning. While the Clinton event had issued free tickets to the general public, the Trump event was by-invite only and for the press.
Men—mostly white—dressed in dark-coloured suits, wearing “Make America Great Again” caps and VIP badges circled the three bars at the venue—even a small bottle of water cost $7. I saw several women—mostly blonde, white and similarly dressed in short dresses and high heels—posing for photographs in front of massive Trump signboards. Inside the hotel’s ballroom, the dazed mediapersons had been barricaded into designated spaces, and were not allowed in the area in front of the stage, where Trump was later scheduled to speak. Fox News played on all television screens, but only a handful of people actually watched.
To me, the demeanour and behavior of the white, young, male Trump staffers—of whom there were plenty—offered an insight into what the age of Trump might look like. One young staffer who appeared to be inebriated, jumped up and down excitedly, shouting “Yes, yes, yes!” He called his dad and shouted into the phone, “Can you believe that I’m friends with the President of the United States? He’s done it. It’s unbelievable.” Then, the young man lay down on the ground in disbelief, only to get up a few moments later to hug a female staffer. Noticing my bemusement, he said, “Even I thought maybe Hillary would win.”
I spotted another staffer—dressed in an expensive suit and a Trump cap with a drink in his hand. The man approached a blonde woman wearing a black dress and said, “I love you.” She ignored him and went to pose for a photograph in front of a Trump sign. Apparently undeterred, he walked into her picture and got himself clicked beside her. Then, he gave her a leery smile. The woman began to walk the other way. “Have a good evening,” she told him, with a smile.
As the night stretched, three staffers huddled at a table, staring restlessly at the screen in front of them. Votes from the key states of Pennsylvania and Michigan, which would swing the presidency Trump’s way, were still being counted. One of the staffer’s friends, a New York-based lawyer who sat with them,, smiled and told me, “I am the silent majority.”
A young high-school student with a VIP badge was slumped on the floor between two tables, clearly drunk. He didn’t flinch as a photographer took shots of him in rapid succession. The teenager told me he was having fun. Two tables away, someone shouted “President fucking Trump!”
By around midnight, the results had become clear. When the news agency, the Associated Press called Pennsylvania for Trump, he was only a few electoral-college votes short of winning the presidency. By around 2.30 am, Trump was declared the president-elect across all news networks. Loud cheers and chants of “USA, USA” filled the air as people filed into the ballroom, eagerly waiting for him to speak.
The Trump that walked onto the stage to speak was very different from the Trump of the campaign. Speaking in a soft tenor, he called for unifying a divided America—ironic given that much of his victory owed itself to that very divide. “I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all of Americans, and this is so important to me,” he said.“For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people”—pause for laughter—“I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country,” he added, seemingly paying no heed to how he had continually targeted Mexicans and Muslims, asking for them to be deported and banned from entering USA.
Trump’s speech was brief and he left soon after. Exhausted but thrilled guests filed out as media persons tried to accost them for sound bites. A surprisingly large number of people refused to speak to the press.
In one corner, a few young men and women shouted and jumped around a bust of Trump that had been placed there. One of them told me above the din, “Finally, America gets what it deserves. Someone who is not corrupt like Hillary, who is not a criminal, someone who will abide by the Constitution and someone who actually believes in America.”
Two young, white women, both of whom were college students and had refused to share their names, sat on chairs with their heels off. One of them blamed the media for the furore surrounding the sexual-assault allegations made against Trump by several women. “That was just the media trying to spin things around to make it seem like he was worse than Hillary when she is obviously a criminal in everything she did,” she told me. Referring to her friend and herself, she said with evident relief, “Obviously we didn’t buy into it because we know Trump for who he is. He is a sweet man, smart, and is genuine. And he is going to be an amazing president.”
I watched as a woman journalist struggled to interview a white-haired man who slurred continuously. Another man, wearing a white cowboy hat, proclaimed to a camera, “It is the greatest day of my life and the true hope for salvation of America.”
The ballroom floor was strewn with torn campaign placards and smashed beer bottles. A woman dressed in red, who had taken off her heels, had injured her feet on broken glass. A New York Police Department officer was bent over, trying to pick shards of glass from her sole.
I asked one of the men filing out of the hall how he felt about the many Americans deeply upset by the stunning result. “They can move to Mexico,” he coolly replied, before walking off.
This is part six of a series of reports by Niha Masih on Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign. You can read her first story in this series, a report on Donald Trump and Atlantic City, here; her second story, on a Trump rally at Chester in Pennsylvania, here; her third story, on blue collar support for the Republican nominee, here; her fourth story, on the women who support Trump, here; and her fifth story, on the Republican Hindu Coalition's event for Trump, here.