It’s Day 20 of the Kamala Era but Trump World remains in the Before Times. Sure, the Let’s Go Brandon merch is being sold at a discount, but otherwise the mood in the non-swing state of Montana is very July 2024. Or July 2016. The ex-president is on his way for a rally tonight and the sound system in the parking lot of Bozeman’s Brick Breeden Fieldhouse bleats out the same seven songs, including “Memory” from Cats. The roughly 8,000 supporters who began queuing at dawn will hear the song approximately 30 times before they enter the temple of Trump this evening. 

There are plenty of other Trump comfort-food visuals, a Red Bull-slamming dude wears an electoral college T-shirt with Trump states in red and blue states labeled Dumb Fuckistan. The guy in the block suit is here and tells an admirer that it is his greatest wish to sub in for Fox’s Greg Gutfeld one day. (His dream comes a bit closer later today when Fox News misidentifies him as a Montana voter.) Huckleberry smoothies are being hawked for $14 next to a pickup truck emblazoned with the image of Donald Trump shooting a Tommy Gun while saying “Merry MAGA you filthy animal.” A teen waits in line for a porta-potty and sings along with the Natasha Owens classic, “Trump Won”:

“We got dead people votin’ Dropboxes and Dominion
And facts are facts, it’s not just my opinion
The Democrats know how to steal
Come on man, here’s the deal

Trump won and you know it
Trump won and you know it.”

What we are all doing here is not exactly clear. The Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket is barnstorming swing states on a sugar high that may or may not last until November, but this is Trump’s only rally of the week. It is being held in Montana, a state he still owes money from previous rallies and a state he will win by at least 15 points. My theory is that Trump booked the Bozeman trip before Joe Biden’s departure from the race. That’s when he thought he could cruise the country once a week grandstanding for Senate candidates that could get him a Republican majority.

I’m also guessing the fundraisers had already been locked in. Trump is heading to Big Sky’s posh Yellowstone Club this afternoon, the kind of event that would cause the fictional John Dutton to spit on the ground and then deliver a deranged monologue about all the rich fuckers ruining his beloved Montana.

One of those late-arriving arrivistes is Tim Sheehy, the Montana Republican Senate candidate running against three-term incumbent Jon Tester, a seven-fingered dirt farmer from Big Sandy. Sheehy is generically handsome with gelled, dark-blond hair. He gladhands this morning in a Sheehy For Senate fleece, proclaiming, “We’re going to Save America and these people are going to help us do it.”

Tester was not available for comment because, according to a source, he was busy pulling 16-hour days on his tractor harvesting peas back on his farm in Big Sandy. Sheehy once called Tester’s farmer credentials fake and described the farm where Tester grew up as just a “weed patch.” I don’t think they are friends.

Sheehy’s background is different. He was raised in a posh Minnesota lake house and only moved to Montana in 2014. Sheehy has never spent a day involved in Montana politics, continuing a storied tradition of Republican rich dudes moving to Montana, buying a ranch, throwing on some work jeans, and trying to convince the locals he is a man of the people.

Sheehy has a lush bio, a Navy SEAL who served with distinction in Afghanistan before moving to Montana and founding Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company. Many of Sheehy’s photos feature him looking rugged in a flight suit with one of Bridger’s planes in the background. Tonight, he will talk about water-bombing forest fires for a living.

Alas, the thing about too-good-to-be-true candidates is they often turn out to be not actually true. Bridger Aerospace reported losses of $77 million in 2023 with its stock down 54 percent for the year. An auditor recently reported: “The Company has suffered recurring losses from operations, operating cash flow deficits, debt covenant violations, and insufficient liquidity to fund its operations that raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

Well, he still has a stellar military record. Sort of, maybe? Sheehy has a bullet lodged in his arm that, depending on his various accounts, either happened in Afghanistan during an attack, or from friendly fire, or, uh, in Glacier National Park in 2015 when he dropped his Colt .45. Sheehy has shared a Rashomon number of accounts of his bullet and I assumed this would cause him to low-key his military record tonight.

I should have known better. I also should have known that Donald Trump’s presence here has little to do with getting him to 270 electoral votes and a helluva lot to do with a political vendetta straight out of a not-picked-up Showtime pilot on corruption.

Stories emerged in the days after Trump was shot about how his brush with death had changed him into a softer version of himself. Politico posited, “A changed Trump? Some allies detect an ‘existential’ shift after shooting.”

Nope. In a few hours, Trump will take the stage and call a reporter a “maggot,” mock Tester’s weight, promise mass deportations, and question the origin of Kamala Harris’ last name.

Nothing has changed and that’s a problem.

I CAME ACROSS a half-dozen Trump supporters clasping hands and praying for his safety near their SUV as I walked toward the fieldhouse a few hours before the rally. It wasn’t residual words of thanks for Trump surviving last month’s assassination attempt, but news that Trump Force One had mechanical difficulties and had to land in Billings, a hundred miles away. Other supporters had more personal concerns.

“He better not fucking cancel, I’ve been out here for 12 hours,” mutters one guy.

Agreed.

Trump doesn’t cancel, but he has to hop a different plane from Billings to Bozeman and then his motorcade heads down to his Big Sky fundraiser. That meant he wouldn’t take the stage here until 9:30 p.m. local time, which seems to defeat any attempt to alter the political narrative as Harris and Walz held another rapturous rally in Arizona during primetime. This was my first Trump rally since his infamous one in Tulsa during the 2020 campaign that claimed Herman Cain’s life, but the presentation hit the same notes of malice and unintentional comedy.

The sound system pumps in Celine Dion singing the theme song from Titanic and later there’s a video of Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis singing “Great Balls of Fire” from the movie of the same name — the heartwarming tale of a 22-year-old man courting his 13-year-old cousin that surely would be anathema to the Pizzagate anti-pedo supporters in the crowd.

The gathered hear a series of opening acts who are obsessed with the issue of masculinity. Maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me in a fieldhouse with multiple national rodeo championship banners in a state governed by Greg Gianforte, a man once convicted of assaulting a reporter.

The Montana Republican Party chair derides Tester as a vodka cranberry drinker, which offends my personal vodka drinking preferences. The microphone finds Matt Whitaker, who has parlayed three months as Trump’s acting attorney general into a career often dropping the “acting” from his speech. He shouts for a while about a “world on fire” and a Justice Department targeting Catholics even though President Biden is a practicing Catholic.

Then we get Congressman Ryan Zinke, a man in a black cowboy hat going after Walz for purported stolen valor. Zinke, it should be pointed out, was a decorated Navy SEAL who never made captain because he was caught billing the Navy for personal expenses and was run out as Trump’s ride-a-pony-to-work Interior Secretary for using planes and helicopters for private travel. (He attempted to diffuse the controversy by making the distinction that he never took a jet for private travel; they were all prop planes.)

There’s still no sign of Trump so Sheehy is brought out alone. He begins his speech with a joke.

“Well, you know my name,” says Sheehy. “Those are also my pronouns. ‘She-he.’ I can tell you going to middle school in the Nineties that wasn’t a fun thing to have.”

Oh boy.

Sheehy goes through his military record with no word about his own personal magic bullet. Then he makes a grievous mistake; he makes sense. He offers the usual Republican words about the border crisis and then makes an observation.

“If you wonder why we have a border crisis, it’s because everybody wants to come here and be Americans,” says Sheehy. “No one’s walking across deserts to move to China. No one’s climbing and going in the ocean to move to Russia. They are coming here to be Americans, and we should be proud of that.”

This is a good point! Alas, it runs counter to the Trumpian view that America has become a dystopian shithole. The crowd doesn’t know what to do and there’s an odd quiet. An uncertain Sheehy pivots back to familiar ground.

“Montanans want common-sense government. And what does common sense mean to Montanans? They want a secure border, safe streets, cheap gas.” The crowd stands and cheers. “Cops are good. Criminals are bad. Boys are boys and girls are girls.”

Sheehy exits to applause. The video screen cues up Freddie Mercury camping it up at Live Aid.

TRUMP FINALLY HITS the stage at 9:30 p.m., 90 minutes late. Maybe it’s all the rest he’s been getting, but he’s in a good mood. It’s moments like this that you get a real sense of the man, in all his dyspeptic glory. He talks of Biden and you get Trump unfiltered.

“You know, he wanted to debate. If we didn’t have a debate, he’d still be there. Can you imagine if we didn’t have a debate? Why the hell did I debate him?”

The crowd laughs but you know from his face that Trump means it. He realizes debating Biden early is going to turn out to be the biggest fucking mistake of his life.

The idea that the shooting would transform Trump into a fully formed human was always ridiculous, but there still is the question of Donald’s own personal great reset: He is now trailing Harris nationally in some polls and performing poorly even in the swing states. The man is an amoral realist — could he pivot somewhat to the center in the search of the sliver of the electorate that could determine his fate?

The answer, my friends, is absolutely not.

Trump plays his hits in all their disgusting glory. He calls New York Times reporter Maggie Hagerman “Maggot Hagerman” because she wrote an article casting doubt on a story that the ex-president told about a treacherous helicopter ride. Speaking of Tester, Trump proclaims, “I don’t speak badly about somebody’s physical disability, but he’s got the biggest stomach I have ever seen.”

He offers insight into his verbal slam strategy. “I’ve done a lot of bad name-calling,” says Trump with a chuckle. “You know, when you call somebody that you know how to say the name perfectly, and you call it on purpose, they say, ‘Sir, you made a mistake.’ I say, ‘No, I didn’t.’”

His attacks on Harris are gross and predictable. “You know, it’s interesting. Nobody really knows her last name. If you ask people, ‘Do you know what her last name is?’ Nobody has any idea what it is. ‘Harris.’ How the hell did this happen?”

I did some reporting and Harris turns out to be the last name of Vice President Kamala Harris’ father. Some further digging suggests taking your father’s last name is a common practice in Western cultures.

Trump hits an anti-media jag and the crowd starts their usual finger-pointing and chanting at us reporters herded together in our veal fattening pen. I debate shouting back, “You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!” but instead decide on a five-minute mental health break.

Trump has at least another 45 minutes in him despite the fact some fans are heading for the exits. So I go into a toilet stall and pull up a video I shot on my phone earlier in the day.

I’d heard that there was going to be a 20-foot inflatable IUD outside the Bozeman Public Library as part of a pro-choice, anti-Trump demonstration. Might be some good color. But I fucked up the time and instead stumble into Bubblepalooza. Twenty or so toddlers were blowing said bubbles, fitting themselves with crowns, and listening to the Treble-Makers harmonize through “Top of the World” and “Going to the Chapel.” Finally, I get a glimpse of some of that happiness and joy that Kamala has been talking about!

I leave the stall heartened and energized, only to see a four-year-old peeing on his shoes as he chants, “USA! USA!” Meanwhile, his dad and a friend are screaming, “Sword fight!”

I can do this.

The best thing about a Trump speech is that it is impossible to miss anything because the guy loops around a subject at least five times. Now he’s talking about brutal crimes committed by “illegal aliens” and he makes a promise:

“Here’s all we’re going to do. It’s going to be called a Trump mass deportation, because we have no choice. We have no choice. We have no choice. If Harris wins, a never-ending stream of illegal alien rapists, MS-13 animals, and child predators will ravage your communities …We have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime, and it’s going to be as vicious as any crime ever seen in this country before.”

The remaining crowd stands and cheers. The thing you need to know about Trump rally-goers is they love Trump because he is the political equivalent of a Law & Order binge. He’s always going to hit the same bigoted points you’ve grown to love. You will go home confirmed in your entrenched ideology. Have some more Cheetos.

But tonight there’s a twist, a special guest star that might explain everything. Trump introduces his good friend and former White House doctor Ronny Jackson. Jackson is hyped up on something, maybe just revenge.

“I want to tell you a little bit about this man, Jon Tester. This man who says that he represents Montana in the Senate. This man who tells you that he’s up there trying to clean the place up and trying to fix what’s broken.” Jackson makes some odd motions inside his mouth. “This man is a sleazy, disgusting, swamp politician. He’s a fraud and he’s a liar.”

Dejected reporter heads pop up from their Slack channels like dogs sensing a squirrel with a hobbled leg. Turns out Tester was the ranking member on the Senate Veterans Affair Committee when Trump nominated Jackson to be VA secretary in 2018. Tester helped torpedo Jackson’s nomination after discovering credible allegations of misconduct — drunkenness and the liberal distribution of prescription meds to his colleagues.

Jackson sees it differently.

“I had a spotless, spotless, flawless career in the Navy, I’ve never had a single complaint about anything,” says Jackson. “He came after me. He tried to destroy me. He tried to destroy my family.”

Jackson then turns back to his friend. “The end of Jon Tester starts tonight, and it starts by bringing this man back to the White House!”

Trump smiles at the doctor who proclaimed he was in better shape than Barack Obama. “You’re a great leader,” he says. “You’re a great Admiral.”

This isn’t actually true and seems relevant in the time of Walz getting swift-boated over his use of the rank of sergeant major. Jackson is not actually a rear admiral anymore. The Navy demoted him in 2022 after the Navy Inspector General found the charges of unprofessional behavior brought to light by Tester were accurate. Point goes to the seven-fingered man with the big stomach.

And you may ask yourself, what the hell does any of this have to do with Trump turning his campaign around? Absolutely nothing. The fact that Trump trotted Jackson out to launch a personal vendetta is proof the man is never, ever, ever going to change. There are some benefits: This may result in the man not being able to replace Clarence Thomas when the judge finally discovers shame. 

The arena is now a quarter empty. Trump wraps up with his own vulgar mantra.

“We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. We will make America free again. We will make America great again.”

This is not a recording.

I stumble into the Montana night full of Trump bros high-fiving and cracking open cold ones. 

I miss those happy babies blowing bubbles.