Back from The Trumpening - the venue seats 5,000 people and they had standing-room only. A lot more than 5,000 - guessing more like 7,000 with more turned away. The first speaker did a very brief warmup but mentioned that this gathering exceeded all previous records for number of people at this venue. Here are some photos:
Nice truck (despite being a Dodge).
Here is the back of the line. As I was walking to the line, I saw that the grandstand was about half full. The event was scheduled for 3:00PM and I was there two hours early.
Here I am about ninety minutes later looking back at the line and it is just as long.
There were maybe about 150 protesters. The delightful thing was that they were mostly in favor of Bernie Sanders - only one or two of them visibly supported Hillary.
Like I said, standing room only. Nice peaceful crowd. The Secret Service ran the security checkpoints and these guys were smooth - zero bullshit, zero hassles. I called out to the guy on the other side of the scanner that I had an artificial hip and he motioned me aside and wanded me and fifteen seconds later, I was on my way. What was really curious was the number of folding seats, camera tripods, water bottles, etc. left by the security gate - the ticket specifically said that these items would not be allowed in the venue.
Security was really good. These are professionals at work. And I do photoshop from time to time - a composite image...
Oh Yeah. This guy gave a hell of a speech - very articulate and he read from some prepared notes, nary a TelePrompTer in sight. It was nice in that he had been briefed on the issues of Whatcom County. A bit of extra effort but much appreciated. He spoke earlier today in Spokane, WA so a different set of talking points/speech for there.
I left after about an hour - figured I would watch the last bit of the speech on YouTube and beat the traffic (fast forward to 8:30) heading home.
All in all, a fun outing and I feel a lot better about voting for this man to be our next President. Bernie is not going to get the nomination no matter how much people want and I would not mind a Sanders presidency - his heart is in the right place. The problem is that the fix is in with the Clintons. They are dirty beyond belief.
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