Year In Review: Trump election tour included stop in Berlin

Just days before the Maryland Primary Election in April, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a surprise stop at Stephen Decatur High School in Berlin, rallying thousands of his supporters in a county he would go onto win in a landslide.

Although the state would vote Democratic, the president-elect went on to shock pundits in November, earning an Electoral College win despite losing the popular vote.

Police and the Town of Berlin were given just 48 hours notice before Trump’s April 20 visit. Threats of protests were mostly overblown, as people parked in cornfields near the school and lined up on the street hours before the evening’s stump speech inside the gym.

Reportedly, the crowd was roughly three times greater than what the school could hold, and the lines wrapped around the enormous makeshift parking lot, tucked between farmland and a former Harley-Davidson store, now gone out of business. State and local police guided traffic – cars and people – and swept the area with German shepherds.

At around 4 p.m., the first Trump supporters filed in through the school towards the gymnasium, which, on a good day, can hold maybe a thousand people.

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