This Democrat Went to a MAGA Rally to Try to Understand Trump Supporters

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — President Donald Trump threw himself another big rally Thursday night, this time in Manchester, New Hampshire, a state he nearly clinched in 2016.

We invited Lucas Meyer, the president of the Young Democrats of New Hampshire, to attend the rally with VICE News and talk to Trump’s fanatical supporters about why they love him so much. He agreed to attend because it’s “instructive to experience.”

"Maybe I'll learn something new. I don't count on it. And part of it is I want to see it to, like, motivate myself for the next year and a half,” Meyer said before we arrived downtown outside the Southern New Hampshire University Arena. The last Trump rally Meyer attended was on the day before Election Day 2016 — as a protester.

After talking with five supporters, he didn’t find much common ground, even with someone who once voted blue, Jennifer McCormick. She was a big Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016, and said she was “disgusted” by the way the Democratic Party treated him in the primary process. She has found solace in Donald Trump.

When Meyer told her he believes Clinton fairly won the primary race, McCormick questioned the fact that Clinton won the popular vote.

"I think that's a fact. I don't think that's an opinion. And the fact that won. No you disagree?” Meyer responded.

"I disagree, but OK,” McCormick responded.

Drained after watching the speech on the Jumbotron outside the arena, Meyer said that he learned that Democrats have to “work our asses off if we’re going to beat him.”

Though conversations remained civil, Meyer said that he and the Trump supporters "were talking right past each other.”

“They were operating under a whole different other set of facts than what I was operating under,” he added.