The former president’s loyal supporters say the buzz around Vice President Kamala Harris is merely a “honeymoon phase.”
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Tamara Whitney and her husband, Brian Dugan, both wore T-shirts that read “God Guns and Trump, Keeping America Great” at the Trump rally in Bozeman, Mont., on Friday.
Inside the sometimes upside-down world in which former President Donald J. Trump and his most passionate supporters commune, the current trajectory of the presidential race is totally fine. This has not been the worst three weeks of Mr. Trump’s campaign. Nothing to worry about.
“I’m not nervous at all,” said Tamara Whitney, 59, a retired postal service worker from Helena, Mont. She was one of thousands of Montanans who had come out to Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman on Friday night to see Mr. Trump stump. Johnny Cash played as little kids with big silver belt buckles and cowboy hats and boots wandered by a man wearing a cow-patterned suit jacket. “Trump has got it,” Ms. Whitney said breezily.
In interview after interview, Mr. Trump’s supporters expressed a kind of cocky equanimity about the state of things. It was a decidedly optimistic rendering of the political reality, nurtured by the man for whom they plan to vote, that appeared to be contributing to a creeping sense they have that, if this race does not go their way in November, it will have been another stolen election.
It didn’t much matter to them that on that same day, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, had also been out West, in Glendale, Ariz., for their biggest rally yet (some 15,000 people showed up according to their campaign). Or that Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls, and his fund-raising edge, had vanished. Or that the press and the internet and the entertainment industry were all abuzz with talk of Ms. Harris’s coconut memes and “joy” and “brat” lately.
“I’m sorry, I don’t believe what I see on TV and stuff, so I’m just not worried about it,” said Barb Delaney, 68, a flight attendant from Bozeman.
“It’s kind of like when you date somebody for the first time,” said Chris Black, a 35-year-old from Red Lodge, Mont., who works in real estate and was there with his wife. “The first couple weeks are always really good, but we’ll see in 90 days how it turns out, right?”
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