Trump’s Montana Rally: Firsthand and Secondhand

When Trump came to Kalispell, Montana, I got to see firsthand just how good a politician he is. Then I read the news reports that lied and distorted what happened to make Trump look as bad as possible. Read my analysis from RealClearPolitics.

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By FRANK MIELE

Trump in Kalispell? Count me in.

When the announcement was made that the president would be visiting my hometown on Oct. 14 in support of Aaron Flint’s campaign to replace Ryan Zinke as the congressman from Montana District 1, there was no doubt I would be there.

After all, I had been one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters, writing a column lauding his uncanny political skills in the Daily Inter Lake in August 2015, just six weeks after he launched his presidential bid and while he was still considered a joke by the mainstream media. Over the next three years, my unabashed support of Trump while I was editor made me many enemies and even more friends.

One of the friends I made was Aaron Flint, a morning radio host out of Billings, Montana. Aaron was giving voice to the same conservative ideas that both Trump and I were espousing, and I appeared on his radio program many times over the next eight years. But I had no idea just how popular he was until he announced his campaign for Zinke’s seat.

In a hotly contested primary, novice politician Flint rose to the top and stayed there. His popularity was even more evident at Wednesday’s rally, where he was greeted just as enthusiastically as President Trump, who won Flathead County by margins of 36% in 2016, 16% in 2020, and 33% in 2024.

That being said, some of you may be surprised that Trump chose to campaign for Flint in his race against Democrat Sam Forstag. After all, why shouldn’t Flint be comfortably ahead in the red state of Montana?

There is actually an answer to that. The First District was intentionally drawn in 2022 to make it more competitive – to give Democrats a chance to win in a gesture of fairness even though Montana as a whole is solidly red. As a result, both the college towns of Missoula and Bozeman were included in the new district. And far-left Democrat Forstag has taken advantage of the change to keep the polling close, partly by making up a fake Aaron Flint just like the mainstream media has created a villainous fake Donald Trump over the past 10 years.

If you knew Aaron like I do, you would never believe any of the scary ads that paint him as a danger to Montana’s way of life. Saying that he “cheered” when Montanans lost their health care coverage is a blatant lie. No one cares about hard-working and impoverished Montanans more than Flint, who was raised by a single mother who made plenty of sacrifices to raise her two boys. As a dedicated family man, fifth-generation Montanan, and retired lieutenant colonel, Flint is the very embodiment of common sense that Trump and the other speakers Wednesday extolled as the cornerstone of Republicanism.

And just like I know the difference between the real Donald Trump and Aaron Flint and the fake versions of them that you see on TV, I learned to differentiate between what really happened at the rally and what the Internet has to say about it.

The fact that I had to crawl down a mile of U.S. Highway 93 for an hour just to be able to get a parking spot, then skirt past a triple-tailed snaking line of thousands of ticket holders in order to grab my media credentials, told me plenty about the popularity of Donald Trump in Montana. And that was two and a half hours before the first speakers arrived on stage. By the time Trump arrived nearly two hours later, the crowd was pumped up and eager to see the master of MAGA.

He didn’t disappoint. Yes, he looked old, but that’s no surprise since he is 80. Heck, I looked frail limping a quarter mile from my car to the arena with my sciatica in full flower, and I’m only 71. But as soon as the president stood at the podium, he was even more energized than the crowd. He had them eating out of his hand, first with an extended defense of the Second Amendment, then his support for farmers and law enforcement, plus announcing a major new defense facility approved for Great Falls.

Does he exaggerate? Sure, that’s his style. Does he poke fun at his fellow Republicans? You bet – in a way that’s only possible among friends. Does he call Democrats crazy communists? Absolutely, and everyone lucky enough to be there seemed to agree. Does he command an audience like no one else in politics? You don’t even have to ask. Everyone knows it’s true, even Democrats.

But one of the biggest takeaways from Trump’s speech is that Democrats will lie about anything. Not because Trump said so, but because I watched and read accounts that Democrats made up about what happened at the rally.

When a heckler shouted something at Trump, the president immediately shut him down with an insult and said the fake news would focus on the one heckler and ignore the thousands of supporters in the audience. Sure enough, Newsweek immediately added the incident to their running tally of the times Trump has been “disrupted” by protesters during his current “rally spree.”

Can you think of any other reason why Newsweek would consider a heckler news other than to suggest that Trump is unpopular when his rallies suggest exactly the opposite? For the record, the Republican Party allows anyone to get tickets for the rallies, and if one anti-Trump zealot chooses to attend in order to be rude, it just gives the president one more chance to point out how deranged his opponents are.

And deranged they are. The Irish Star reported that Trump “raged” at the heckler. How so? By saying, “That’s not nice, that’s not nice.” Trump also made a joke about the heckler being punished by his mother when he gets home. Rage? Let’s call it what it really is: A politician who was nearly killed by a political opponent showing grace and humor under fire – fortunately not the bullet kind.

The worst offender in the fake news category may have been Ben Meiselas. I’d never watched “The Meidas Touch” before, but when I saw a YouTube video titled “Trump gives DISASTER SPEECH to TINY CROWD … IN MONTANA!!!,” I had to watch.

What disaster, I wondered? And for that matter, what tiny crowd? The Majestic Valley Arena seats a maximum of 7,000 people, but for this event, it was formatted with a large media platform toward the rear of the facility, limiting attendance to 5,000. The Secret Service shut the doors about an hour before Trump arrived because capacity had been reached, so we know that it was NOT a tiny crowd. Sorry, Ben.

But the worst fake news out of Ben’s report was that Trump had foolishly told Montanans we would be eaten by animals if Democrats got rid of the Second Amendment. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And according to Ben, the cult crowd was eating it up, too, because they really believed Trump had saved them from the big bad animals. If you needed any further evidence that Democrats have no sense of humor, this is it. Trump’s joke was hilarious, and perfectly suited for his Montana audience. We got it. Ben, apparently, didn’t. We laughed. He created a fake news video.

Not to be outdone, an online outlet called The Mirror published a story that said, “Trump leaves MAGA fans yawning as ‘sleepy’ president is 77 minutes late to Montana rally.” Author (I won’t call her a journalist) Yelena Mandenberg claimed that “Trump’s audience … could be seen rubbing their eyes, looking around, and yawning, as it is now past 10:30 p.m. in Montana.” Yeah, it was 10:30 if you were watching in New York, but it was 8:30 in Montana. In fact, the entire rally wrapped up well before 9 p.m. Mountain Time.

Trump Derangement Syndrome apparently includes even the ability to fabulate time itself.

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About Heartland Diary USA

Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,”  “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.