Road Trip to MAGALAND

My first encounter with a Trump crowd in Sin City

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Last week my adventurous friend Jackie asked if I wanted to take a road trip with her to Las Vegas to see Charlie Kirk and Tulsi Gabbard on their Brainwashed Tour. Las Vegas is one of the last places I ever want to go. I have never gambled in my life, I don’t like crowds, I like nature. But I’d never been to one of these events and since I write about this stuff, I figured I should go and see one of these events for myself.

As I got in my car at 5:30 am and headed over to my friend’s house, I had no idea what a wild and crazy journey I had embarked on. But then, that’s the story of my life, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Jackie is a rebel after my own heart and one of the smartest people I know, with the biggest heart and fearless when it comes to speaking her mind. She is also pregnant and in no mood to be trifled with.

Say hello to Jackie in Las Vegas.

But before I get into what happened, let me just say a bit about my previous visits to Las Vegas.

The first time I encountered Vegas was in 1967 and I was eleven years old. My family was driving across the United States after a year abroad, traveling and having some pretty incredible adventures that I’ve written about elsewhere. We were tired of being on the road and ready to get back home to Los Angeles. My conservative Christian parents would have preferred not to drive through the “City of Sin”, but that’s where the freeway took us, so we had no choice but to follow it.

As far as my parents were concerned, it wouldn’t have mattered if we were starving to death or on the verge of total exhaustion, we weren’t getting off that freeway for anything, not until we reached the other side of the city. Along with my sister and two brothers, I was ordered to keep my head down and “avert my gaze” until we got to the other side. I know, I’m not kidding.

Of course, I obeyed, but I was burning with curiosity. What was out there? I don’t remember if I did, but I’m pretty sure I must have taken a peek. What kid wouldn’t?

The funniest thing was that over the course of our travels, we’d survived a lot more dangerous situations than just driving on a freeway through a city—like smuggling Bibles into communist countries. But what came to mind was our Amsterdam fiasco. Somehow, while searching for the YMCA where we planned to stay, we found ourselves lost in the Red-Light District. It’s hard to imagine those long-gone 1960s days of no GPS, no cell phones. My dad had no choice but to stop to ask for directions. He parked the car right in front of one of those windows with a scantily clad woman sitting inside, under a neon red light. Talk about averting your gaze! None of us, my parents included, had ever seen anything like that.

Dad barely made it out of the car before the woman was down the stairs and screaming in his face, swearing up a storm, that he was ruining her business, and he had better move the car, or else. I’d seen my dad stand up to a lot of scary characters, but he was no match for that prostitute. It was the first time I ever saw him speechless. He jumped back into the car, and we made our escape, finding the YMCA at last.

I don’t know, maybe that’s why my parents were so adamant that we were not going to have a repeat incident in Las Vegas. At any rate, we made it through safely and back home.

I didn’t return to Las Vegas until I was thirty years old. The National Tang Soo Do Congress under Grand Master Pat Johnson was holding its annual conference there and I was testing for my black belt. I got off the plane to find the airport filled with row upon row of slot machines, players sitting in front of them, pulling levers in a zombified manner, hoping to get lucky. It was as if these people, who were probably perfectly reasonable back home, became completely irrational the minute their feet touched Las Vegas ground. All the vices they held in check for the rest of the year could be released in one wild weekend.

I didn’t drink, I didn’t gamble, and I was so focused on my mission to pass my test, I didn’t see much more of Vegas than I had passing through at eleven years old. However, I came away from the city with fond memories since I achieved my black belt, one of the most important moments in my life. Not only that, but it happened on Friday the 13th, so forever after I’ve considered it my lucky Las Vegas day.

And here I was going back to Sin City, once again for a purpose that had nothing to do with why most people go there. It’s true that it’s changed a lot since the old days. It’s now kid friendly, with water parks and fun rides. In fact, we had Jackie’s four-year-old son, Ronan, in tow, and she’d booked a night at Circus Circus, thinking there would be some fun activities for him after our business with the Brainwashed Tour was over.

We found our way to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, UNV, where the event was being held, parked the car and walked over to the huge stadium where we saw the crowds.

You know how when you go to Disneyland, it’s like stepping into another world. That’s what it was like that day. Like stepping into MAGALAND.

I don’t know how many people there were, I’m bad at judging crowds, but there were maybe a couple thousand that I could see, milling around. There was a long line of people waiting to go into the stadium, as well as street vendors selling Trump merch. Hustlers like the one below were all over the place.

It was festive, positive, upbeat. Nice, clean-cut folks. Everyone was wearing bright red. Trump hats and American flags on full display. I thought how different it was from a few years ago when Trump supporters were afraid to express their loyalty. In fact, it could be dangerous to wear a Trump hat or t-shirt.

A shocking video from 2019, showed school bus bullies pummeling a 14-year-old boy, leaving him hospitalized with head injuries, all because he'd worn a Trump 2020 hat. As a reminder of what life was like for Trump supporters, here’s the video. It’s pretty disturbing, just to warn you.

There were many such incidents of children getting bullied and beaten up.

A twelve-year-old boy was berated and bullied by classmates. The same thing happened to two teen girls visiting Howard University as part of a tour of Washington DC. And a sixteen-year-old Portland student wearing a MAGA hat talked about how he “sort of expected the bullying from other kids” but what surprised him was the reaction of his teachers, like one teacher saying to him, “Thank goodness you can’t vote.”

A brave teenager girl, Maddie Mueller, was told by school authorities she couldn’t wear a Trump hat, and yet multiple students were wearing Hillary Clinton, Obama and LGBTQ shirts in classrooms. She kept on

I well remember a good friend of mine, a principal of a high school, telling me she had to listen and nod her head as if she agreed while her staff raved about Hillary Clinton and dumped on Trump. If anyone knew she supported Trump, she feared she would lose her job.

How times have changed! People got fed up with being called “deplorables” by their own government officials who were supposed to believe in freedom for all but clearly didn’t. They grew brave. They’d had enough of threats and intimidation.

People are now proud to show their support for Donald Trump. And as we reach the home stretch, that pride just keeps on growing.

If you want a taste of MAGALAND, watch this video of Hulk Hogan at the recent Trump rally at Madison Square Gardens in New York. The media called it a Nazi rally. I wrote about the absurdity of calling Trump a Nazi in What Happens if Trump Wins?

This is wild, let me tell you. The crowd goes absolutely bonkers.

So, Jackie and I were standing outside this huge stadium, wondering where Charlie Kirk and Tulsi Gabbard were because nothing seemed to be happening except for a growing crowd that was waiting for…what?

We asked one of the street venders what was going on.

“Oh, this is the line for the Trump rally. He’s speaking at 7,” he said.

Jackie’s eyes lit up. “What? Trump here, tonight?”

She actually contemplated waiting around for that—it’s an historic moment! Thankfully, though, the fact she was pregnant, with her young son already growing antsy, put her off the idea of waiting around for the next 6 hours. I wasn’t doing that, anyway.

It was now about 1:30 and Charlie Kirk should be speaking somewhere.

We asked a security guard, and he said Kirk and Tulsi Gabbard were holding their event in another location and he would take us there.

As we walked along, he pointed to a smaller building. “That’s where Kamala Harris held her rally.”

“Were you there?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said with a laugh. “When you see her rallies on TV, I don’t know where they get the people because it looks like a lot. But there were only about 50 people waiting outside for her event.”

“Seriously?” said Jackie.

“I kid you not,” he said.

We finally made it to the Brainwashed Tour site and said good-bye to the security guard. It was outside, under the hot sun. There was a crowd of maybe a couple hundred young people squashed in so close to one another, it was impossible to make our way forward. I was encouraged to see a flag with a Star of David and a Cross.

Jackie really wanted to get up to that microphone and speak. She felt like she had some important things to say. I met Jackie through my son and although there was a big age difference, we became good friends. Over the years, I became like a mom and mentor to her.

Jackie grew up in the San Fernando Valley. She’s the first to say her background is “white trash”. She adored her grandfather, a hardworking salt-of-the-earth man who built a successful machine shop business despite being illiterate.

As a kid, the confederate flag was flown in Jackie’s home. Actually, they had one as a huge curtain, plain as day, and people could see it from the street. Her father was in and out of prison and shot her up with heroin when she was twenty-three. Despite all the challenges—and many more than I can't go into here—Jackie was the first person in her family to graduate from college. She graduated with honors at Pierce College and gave the valedictorian address. She went on to attend Humbolt University, and for a minute became indoctrinated by the woke professors. She carried signs in protests until she got fed up and realized it was all propaganda.

Driving to Las Vegas, we had discussed what she would say if she got up to the microphone. We talked about how she’d been outraged by Trump and his attitude toward women, his “grab her by the pussy” comments for example.

“Yeah, haven’t we all heard drunk women in bars say far worse things, like making bets about which guy they're going to seduce into f**king them, and how big his d*ck might be,” we agreed.

It was all so hypocritical. Jackie wanted a chance to tell college kids that she had been there once, too, she’d been brainwashed, and that it’s okay to admit you’re wrong and to change sides. Be brave. Stand up against the woke ideology that they thought they had to agree with, or they wouldn’t get good grades and then they wouldn’t get good jobs, and then they wouldn’t be successful like they’d been taught they had to be.

Jackie never made it up to the microphone and we didn’t even catch a glimpse of Charlie Kirk or Tulsi Gabbard. We heard their muffled voices, rising from where they sat under a canopy, the crowd pushing in on them from every direction. I was amazed, actually, at the lack of security. No one was checking bags or clothing. Anyone could have gotten to the front with a knife or a gun. I thought how much courage it must take for Charlie and Tulsi to make themselves vulnerable like that.

Charlie had been doing this for a while, an important work of reaching out to young people. But this was nothing like the edgy videos from a couple of years ago, with young wokesters confronting him at the microphone about transgenderism, or racism, or whatever.

As far as I could see, this was all MAGA college students. Even if Jackie had made it to the mic, they wouldn’t have let her speak since they were desperate for students with confrontational questions, but there didn’t seem to be anyone like that in the crowd.

For the MAGA students, it must have been encouraging and inspiring to be there, and that was important. As for any dissenters that might have showed up, they would have been intimidated by the crowd in red and that was a shame.

Well, it was certainly a turnaround from the days when Trump supporters were the intimidated ones on school campuses.

I’ve heard that they’ve started the first anti-woke university, the University of Austin, in Texas, “promoted as the antidote to groupthink on college campuses, and where it is almost impossible to be cancelled.”

Student Rhett Jones and his take on Trump Credit: John Munro for the Telegraph

Between the freshly painted walls, students are encouraged to vociferously disagree with each other, there is no Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and invoking violence is the only thing that could see someone no-platformed.

Having opened five weeks ago, UATX claims to be a place where students and faculty “have the right to pursue their academic interests and deliberate freely, without fear of censorship or retribution”.

And to this effect, the writing is, quite literally, on the wall.

Pinned to the noticeboard is a photograph of Kim Jong-un with the caption “live, laugh, love”. It is nestled between a picture of Elon Musk jumping in the air at Trump’s recent rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, with a speech bubble saying “Strauss!” and a sign-up sheet for a talent show.

Pano Kanelos, UATX’s president, came up with the idea to start a new university with former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss three years ago while lamenting the state of “ideologically monocultural” higher education.

He says he is delighted with how the first semester is going.

“Students are excited, they’re engaged, they’re working so hard, and we have a very rigorous curriculum... you can just see the intellectual sweat, they’re just working so hard, and they love it”, he says

Sounds fantastic. I wish I’d gone to a college like that. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more. Jackie is thinking of getting a higher degree. Driving to Vegas, I’d told Jackie about the college. “You should go there,” I said.

We weren’t having a good college day. We were hot and bothered, and Ronan was at the end of his patience. We needed to get to our hotel.

We made our way to Circus Circus, Jackie telling Ronan how much fun he was going to have. He is an extremely bright kid, by the way. At four years old, he reads at a third-grade level, and he can do math problems like you wouldn’t believe. He and I waited in the car while Jackie went in to register, since she had made the reservation.

We waited and waited until finally, Jackie called me. She was mad.

“They want me to use this robot machine, and I won’t do it,” she said.

Once Jackie gets something in her head, she doesn’t budge. She was insisting on checking in with a real human being, but they were saying it was impossible. Ronan and I got out of the car and went inside. There was Jackie, arguing with a hotel employee, surrounded by the same kiosks in airports, where you have to check your bags and verify your identity.

Not exactly a robot, but I got what she meant. She just wanted a human, not a machine. She was told she had no choice. A manager was called over. She was just as stubborn as Jackie and a standoff ensued.

The hotel was horrible. It had tacky carpet and clowns on the walls worthy of a Stephen King scary movie.

I took Ronan out again. We sat outside looking at the characters shuffling by, dragging their suitcases behind them, some just arriving, hoping for the big win, others leaving, having lost too much and wondering how they were ever going to recover. Yet they’d be back again next year or maybe even next month.

So much time went by I started worrying they’d carted Jackie off to the police station, pregnant as she was, and I’d have to go bail her out. Finally, she came out.

“Well, I’ve been banned for life from Circus Circus,” she said.

“A badge of honor,” I said.

“Can we just drive home,” Jackie pleaded.

I was so relieved. “Yes!”

“Oh, thank God,” said Jackie. “I was afraid you’d want to find another hotel.”

“Are you kidding? I just want to get out of here,” I said.

So, we got back in the car and drove all the way home again.

I was never so happy to climb into my own bed that night, knowing I wouldn’t have to wake up to slot machines and desperate people doing crazy things they were going to regret when they got home.

I had no regrets. All in all, it was an enlightening trip. On the other hand, I really don’t care if I never go back to Las Vegas again.

And that’s my MAGALAND adventure. One more week until elections. Will Trump win? Just look at these guys. How can Trump not win?

Will Trump “Make America Great Again”?