DAMON WINTER: Children at Trump rallies

During the last few weeks of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the fall of 2016, I found myself seeking out increasingly tender and empathetic photographs of his supporters. Maybe it was the long weeks away from my own son that softened my eye and drew me toward parents and their children at Trump’s rallies. It’d been a long journey covering the campaign, and I remember being exhausted by the anger I experienced. The crowds took Trump’s lead and directed their hatred at me and my colleagues from the press, event after event, day after day, and, eventually, it took a toll.

In those final weeks, I remember being heartbroken that children were exposed to this anger, were learning from it and participating in it. I knew those parents loved their children just as I do mine, and that common bond was my reminder of their humanity and my own. I was searching for a way to connect in an environment that felt so toxic and violently polarized.

One of the most poignant photos from that time was of a boy, dressed as a fledgling Trump, in the front row of a rally with his father in Grand Junction, Colorado, just two weeks before the election. Together, they chanted, “Lock her up, lock her up!” The father beamed with pride. Vitriol sputtered from his son Jaden’s mouth.

early 19 months after Trump took office, I photographed my first Make America Great Again rally on Thursday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It felt eerily familiar. The staging, the music, the lighting, the faces in the crowd, the metal cage that confined the press, and even the wording of the opening announcement urging supporters not to hurt any protesters, were all the same. The journalists I had befriended on the campaign were all there.  The jarring difference in this all-too-familiar setting was that “president” now preceded the former candidate’s name.

As before, I was drawn to the children, but this time through the lens of 19 months of the Trump administration. The people in that arena supported the actions of a sitting president, not just the musings of a candidate. In that time, the anger I experienced on the trail had taken shape with real-world consequences. The chants of “Build the wall” in 2016 were realized in a haphazard zero-tolerance immigration policy that resulted in nearly 3,000 child separations in 2018.

That night, I photographed 10-year-old Gianna Musolino holding her father’s arm in the most tender and gentle embrace, her arms entwined around his, her head nestled in the soft bend of his elbow. There was no mistaking the comfort and protection she felt under his wing and the pride he felt in providing it.

I thought again about my son, as I have done so many times over these past few months, imagining with deep sadness what it would be like for him to be taken away from us and what it might do to him. How could any parent possibly support a president capable of this?

After I left, I wished I had asked the father, Thomas Musolino, that question. But, as I looked through my photographs, the answer was apparent. Musolino’s face was Trump’s own; a two-dimensional, hollow-eyed cardboard facsimile of the president. As much as I tried, that night, after living in Trump’s America, it was even harder to connect.