By admin 
The first thing I saw in the Wichita suburb of Park City on Monday was a Jeep Wrangler pulled over by law enforcement. A white sign covering the driver’s side backseat window read: “Kill your local pedophile.”
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I couldn’t stop, so I never found out whether the driver was for Donald Trump or against him. In the Pizzagate days of Trump’s first term, I’d have guessed MAGA. In the Epstein era, I’d lean toward the Resistance. You never know anymore.
What I do know: Whatever the polls and pundits say about Republicans’ chances in November, the scene Monday at Heartland Credit Union Arena, where President Donald Trump had come to rally the Kansas faithful, felt like 2016 all over again.
I confess that on the three-hour drive from Kansas City, passing signs advertising diesel at $6 a gallon and unleadeded hovering around $4, I’d entertained the possibility that Monday’s rally might be a bust. I’ve seen footage of Trump events in recent years that looked half-full, with crowds resembling the audience at a Mike Love-led Beach Boys: old people waiting for the old man to play the hits.
That was not what Monday was.
The arena seats 6,500, and there were thousands more who never made it in. People grumbled, but on the whole few seemed to mind standing in the sun in a grassy parking lot and on pavement for five hours. Trump was in town. Their guy. He hadn’t visited the state in eight years, and who knows if he’d ever come back?
Out in the crowd
Walking the crowd, talking to the MAGA faithful, I heard a lot of conspiracy theories. Democrats were going to steal the midterms. Protesters were being paid to show up. The media, of course, lies and lies and lies.
I heard liberals referred to as “blue-haired b-tches” and “low-energy f-ggots,” the latter shouted by a twentysomething MAGA guy walking past the few hundred protesters who’d gathered in a patch of grass to shout at the people walking toward the venue.
I liked talking to the merchandise vendors at these events: the guys selling Trump hats and Charlie Kirk shirts and other MAGA collectibles. Many travel the country following the rallies, which gives them a different perspective on the movement.
A middle-aged white guy named Nate, who declined to give his last name, was selling Trump merchandise spread across a long table. I told him I was a little surprised at the size of the crowd.
He wasn’t surprised at all. He said the crowds he’d seen this year had been among the most enthusiastic he’d seen since he started working these events during Trump’s first term.
“The media is always underestimating him, and they still are,” Nate told me. “Look around.”
It was hard to argue with the immediate evidence. The parking lot contained what looked like six football fields’ worth of snaking lines, filled with people who mostly had no shot of getting into the building. Still they stood, barely moving, well into the evening. When I finally left around 6 p.m., plenty were still waiting.
On my way out, I stopped to talk with some of the protesters. There were lots of signs about Epstein. The words “Trump” and “pedophile” were scribbled on many of them.
One protester, a bearded Wichita man in his 30s named Clayton, told me he’d voted for Trump in 2016. Now he wanted him impeached.
“He’s a traitor to our country,” Clayton said.
He was angry about Trump’s broken promises on keeping America out of new wars and releasing the Epstein files. He objected to the influence of AIPAC money in politics (contributions and spending connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee). Clayton said his parents were conservative, and that he considered himself somewhere in the middle, more libertarian than anything.
“People walking past have been yelling at us and calling us Democrats,” he said. He laughed. “I’m not a Democrat. I just don’t like wars and pedophiles.”
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Clayton was calm and friendly. A lot of the other protesters were not. They shouted at people arriving at the arena, accusing them of defending pedophiles. Even fairly ordinary-looking people who seemed to be doing little more than walking to or from their cars caught abuse from Resistance types.
Of course, because conflict makes the best content, this was where many of the television cameras and livestreamers had set up.
On one side, the No Kings crowd with its smugly clever signs. On the other, the sneering MAGA types, mocking the libs for their pronouns and hurt feelings. These were the exaggerated versions of Democrats and Republicans, the mascots, the id. The whole scene was depressing.
Trump’s speech
I made it back to my hotel in time to catch Trump’s speech on a livestream.
He was ostensibly in Kansas to campaign for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, whose unexpectedly tight reelection race against Democrat Adam Hamilton has attracted national attention. Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, but recent polls have shown Marshall and Hamilton running close.
Oddly, for somebody who had come to Kansas to help save Marshall’s Senate seat, Trump spent what seemed like as much time attacking Michigan U.S. Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed, whom he called “arrogant,” and praising Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt, a “big star in the Senate” who was in attendance, as he did talking about Marshall. But that’s Trump.
He played the hits. Immigration, transgender athletes, the rigged 2020 election. The terrible news media. He warned that Democrats would destroy Western civilization and talked at length about Somali immigrants in Minnesota and the chaos in France.
He yammered on for about an hour and a half, complaining, bragging, mocking protesters who interrupted him and occasionally remembering that he was supposed to be talking about Kansas. He started one sentence about lowering inflation after the war in Iran and ended it talking about violent criminals crossing the southern border. He never got back around to the inflation part.
Trump trotted back out his promise to give every adult American citizen a $5,000 check if Republicans retained control of Congress.
“If you elect a Republican House and a Republican Senate on November 3, you get $5,000,” Trump said. “And if you lose, you get nothing.”
He announced an $8 billion program to help farmers with diesel costs. He pledged to permanently allow year-round sales of E15, a gasoline blend containing 15% ethanol that is normally restricted during summer months, a move that would increase demand for Kansas corn — but only if Marshall wins.
“If Adam Hamilton is in, I’m not doing it,” Trump said. “That’s it. I’m only doing it for (Marshall).”
There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether Trump’s historically low approval ratings will be a liability for Marshall. Some political observers have even suggested that Trump might be doing Republicans more harm than good by bringing his dog-and-pony show to states where Senate and governor’s races are tight. I’d begun to think the same thing.
But I’m not sure how anybody could have been in Wichita on Monday and come away convinced of that. The MAGA base in Kansas doesn’t seem to have softened at all. They’re fired up.
“We don’t win this race unless President Trump’s voters get out and vote. That’s how close it is,” Marshall said Monday before the event. “He’s got to present his case that he’s on the ticket.”
Trump did make a version of that case Monday, in his typically blunt way.
“Pretend, please,” he said from the stage, “that I’m on the ballot.”
This story was originally published October 20, 2026 at 6:23 AM with the headline “Trump’s rally outside Wichita Monday felt like 2016 all over again | Hudnall.”
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