The Trump sideshow...

At Donald Trump Rally, Ohio Students Become Part of a Lesson

By JASON HOROWITZNOV

They looked as if they didn’t belong.

Seven students from Columbus Alternative High School filled a pocket of space in a cavernous hall of the city’s Convention Center on Monday night. They had come for a Donald J. Trump rally, but they looked as if they would be more at home at a casting call for the television show “Fame.” The group included a boy in skinny jeans who wore a wool hat and kept the fingernails on his right hand long and manicured, a girl with the sides of her head shaven, and two other girls wearing Marvel T-shirts and granny glasses.

They came to get extra credit for a history class. They were about to become part of the lesson.

Depending on which side of the Thanksgiving table one sits on, Mr. Trump’s run for the Republican presidential nomination is either the most refreshingly apolitical candidacy in ages or a steepening descent into unvarnished demagogy.

And while Mr. Trump’s heated language on surveillance of Muslims, accepting Syrian refugees and illegal immigration is firing up his crowds, it is also drawing more protesters, resulting in physical clashes.

At recent Trump rallies, supporters have spit in protesters’ faces, tackled demonstrators in Miami, and shoved and punched a Black Lives Matter activist in Alabama. (“Maybe he should have been roughed up,” Mr. Trump said after the episode.) Mostly, he has embraced the scuffles as a new and action-packed dimension of the Donald Trump experience.

“Isn’t a Trump rally much more exciting than these other ones?” Mr. Trump asked as the police ejected a protester shouting “Trump’s a racist” from a rally in Worcester, Mass., last week. “That kind of stuff only adds to the excitement.”

The Columbus rally started mildly enough. The 10,000 or so Trump supporters streamed into the Convention Center, ignoring a demonstrator who held a sign that said “Hitler Trump for President” and who sarcastically cheered, “Vote racism again!”

In a long line inside, many supporters perused a selection of “Make America Great” buttons and talked about their holiday plans and the weather. A woman in a “Tyranny Response Team” shirt smiled warmly at her son as he stood back to back with his grandmother to compare their heights. Old friends spotted one another and hugged.

As the crowd filled the hall, Steve Hopkins, from Waverly, Ohio, found a spot midway between the stage and the back wall. “You’re fine,” he said kindly to taller people who were obstructing the footage of the massive crowd that he was recording with his phone.

The whole rally had a family-friendly concert feel, with a sweet waft of cotton candy smell, thousands of smartphones raised like lighters and a singalong music playlist.

The high school students came in. A little bit immature and more than a little garrulous, they laid down their bags and at times lay down, appearing like a multiracial island in a sea of white faces.

As Mr. Trump’s advance team seated three black people with the Trump fans behind the stage, the students and the supporters around them sang along to “Skyfall” by Adele. When the chorus of “Hey Jude” played, Mr. Trump’s supporters lifted and swayed “The Silent Majority Stands With Trump” signs. A couple wearing American flag shirts embraced.

When “Rocket Man” came on, the students were joined by a college-age couple who introduced themselves and confided that they were there to do something, but would not say what.

As the songs began to repeat, the crowd grew restless, chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump” over the aria “Nessun Dorma.” When “Hey Jude” came on again, they booed.

Mr. Trump finally took the stage about half an hour later than expected, bathing in the adoration of a crowd that was a mix of exhausted, exhilarated and a little upset.

He began with an attack on a news media that has arguably fueled his success. “Look at all those cameras,” he said with disgust, gesturing at the media pen. (Lately, the journalists at Mr. Trump’s rallies, which are open to the public, have been strictly confined at the back of the room, but this reporter entered with and remained with the crowd.)

Mr. Trump’s supporters turned around and jeered at the cameras, some laughingly and some with vitriol in their eyes. “Boooooo,” said Mr. Hopkins, who stood near the students.

One of the high school girls turned to her friends and said of Mr. Trump, “I didn’t think he was real, y’all. I thought he was a hologram.”

To supporters seeing him up close, the Trump experience was very real. They locked eyes on him and nodded religiously when he talked about “anchor babies” cast by unauthorized immigrants, or the “animals and savages” perpetrating terrorism, or the “scum” on the streets. Guarded by a line of Secret Service agents under the stage, he made his fans howl with laughter and shake their heads in disgust at “stupid” leaders who use teleprompters.

He even got them to mock their brethren who could not get into the hall. “You should have gotten here earlier,” Mr. Trump said to applause.

When he referred to the  man identified as the ringleader of the Paris attacks this month as “the guy with the dirty, filthy hat,” the crowd chuckled, but one of the high school girls, unexpectedly appalled, shouted, “You bastard,” before lowering her head.

When Mr. Trump said he would bring back waterboarding as an interrogation tactic against terrorism suspects, and added, “If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway,” an older couple behind the group of teenagers threw back their heads in utter delight.

“Amen,” the woman said.

“Oh, my God,” one of the high school girls said. Another covered her mouth in shock.

Then, when Mr. Trump began talking about surveillance of refugees, the college-age couple standing in front of the students began chanting, “Hating Muslims helps ISIS.” The students were caught off guard, but after a moment of uncertainty, some of them joined in.

Mr. Hopkins leaned over and screamed, “Shut up!”

Mr. Trump stopped his remarks and looked toward the commotion with disgust. “Two people, two people,” he said dismissively of the couple, as the crowd started booing and the people around them began shouting. “So sad,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah, you can get ’em the hell out.”

The crowd erupted in triumph as the protesters and students turned to leave. “Get out of here!” Mr. Hopkins shouted, shoving one of the two protesters in the back on his way out.

One of the high school girls said afterward that as they exited, people in the crowd had asked them, “If you don’t love America, why don’t you just leave?” and that a man had told her that if she had not been filming on her phone, he would have slapped her.

She and another student said they had heard an epithet for black people hurled their way.

After Mr. Trump wrapped up his speech and “We’re Not Gonna Take It” blasted on the speakers, Mr. Hopkins rushed to the stage to get a picture of Mr. Trump.

Asked what he thought of the rally, he said: “It’s like a movement! And he’s a man of action.”

And the protesters? “Very rude.”