Excerpt – ‘How Trump Won’: Pandemonium in New Mexico

It’s an amazing spectacle that never quite seems to wear thin. And it seems, as we walk toward the hangar, that there is something indomitable about that airplane. The Republican nominee for president has a private plane, and he knows how to use it. The lights, the music, the choreography of landing and coming to rest in front of the hangar—it’s almost comical in its stylized heroism.

One wants very much not to be taken in by it. And yet it is arresting, impressive, even moving.

While the plane slows on the runway, I talk to people in the crowd. There are a larger than usual number of Hispanic Trump supporters here, reflecting the demography of the state. One tells me that Trump was not her first choice; she didn’t even like him when he was on The Apprentice. She sees herself as more conservative than Trump.

And yet, challenged by her liberal friends to defend him, she refused to back down. And she has “stuck with it” ever since.

Inside the hangar, the noise is deafening as the jet appears, the word “TRUMP” emblazoned in white near the nose. When the candidate does not appear right away, the crowd chants, “We want Trump!”

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