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Michelle Goldberg

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Donald Trump’s MAGA Lollapalooza at Madison Square Garden on Sunday began with an iconic scene from the 1970 biopic “Patton” on the jumbotron. Strutting in front of a giant American flag, George C. Scott, playing the legendary World War II general, growled, of the Nazis, “We’re not just going to shoot the bastards. We’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.” While it was nice, I suppose, to hear anti-Hitler rhetoric at a Trump rally, the belligerent talk of total war was unnerving in the context of a campaign focused on crushing internal enemies.

The event, which featured almost the entire MAGA firmament on a bill that stretched for more than six hours, opened with a set by a Texas comedian and podcaster, Tony Hinchcliffe. His unadulterated racism somewhat surprised me, given that the Trump campaign usually tries to serve its bigotry with a filmy veneer of plausible deniability. “These Latinos, they love making babies too,” he said. “There’s no pulling out, they don’t do that, they come inside, just like they did to our country.” He continued, “I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” Then he made a crack about Black people carving watermelons for Halloween.

It was one of the uglier Trump rallies I can recall, which is saying something. The speaker Grant Cardone, a businessman and high-profile Scientologist, said of........

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