Momentum is a force all its own. You can’t be a force greater; momentum will take you and you will move with it. This is where everybody in attendance at Erie International Airport found themselves, Tuesday night.

From the moment the late plane finally coasted into position, through ’til the slicked back, veneered, top coated figure scored by his trademark red tie emerged and strode down toward the crowd, every person present was caught in his torque and draft. The presence of Donald J. Trump carried itself, and everybody on site with it.

He’d been rambling off script for longer than usual; people had been roaring and cheering and carrying on; but, about thirty four minutes in, something happened – a moment so pivotal so as to decompress the entire space. When his truth came out.

He’d made several references to Erie, near the beginning – to uproarious cheers. But, this time, in the blink of his twinkling eye, in a context that rendered thousands stone silent, he dropped the facade.

“Because”, he said, “everything was so good [before “the plague”]. Why would I ever have to come to Erie?”

“Erie..!” , he sneered.

Wait.

What?

Suddenly, we were stripped naked. We were Dreary Erie, the Mistake On The Lake, the “old relic” of recent date. We were profoundly beneath him, likely rating nothing but a mere phone call (and, he’d brought his hand to his ear, to mime it.) The place.went.dead. And dead silence, outside in the fall night air, is the coldest kind.

He contextualized the question, dripping with condescension, as if: “What would [ever ] have brought him to Erie”? Nobody. moved. You could feel no air, at all. But, he kept talking, internally frantic, gripping the lectern just a little harder, leaning down just a bit further. In a blur, “but, now I’m here”, something about “needing us”, and would we “please vote for him”? It was backpedaling. And, it was terrible.

Momentum: dead. It took him a good ten minutes to build back. He’d lost his crowd. Suddenly, Donald Trump was alone, at a microphone, flailing, in front of several thousand freezing people standing outside, exposed and humiliated, reminded that they weren’t anything to him. Not really. Not at all. Only insofar as they were prepared to vote him into a four year reprieve from criminal indictment.

Oh, yes. For just a few, crystal clear, fully revealed minutes, President Trump showed the people of Erie who he really was. I just hope most of them brought that home with them. I hope they quietly remember how he made them feel. Because, friends, that is the man. That is how he regards anyone who isn’t in service to him.

Build on that silence.

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© 10/20/2020 Ruth Ann Scanzillo All rights those of the author, born and raised in Erie PA, whose direct observations are contained herein, and whose name appears above this line. No copying, in part, whole, or fragment, including translations, permitted without direct, written permission requested of the author. Thank you.

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