Cliff Sims

was really an eye-opening moment for a lot of people.

And I would include myself in that.

It was held in Mobile, Alabama, which was strategically really smart because you had the Florida Panhandle that could get there.

You had Mississippi and Louisiana down on the coast that could get there.

You could have Alabama that could get there.

It was kind of this like cross section of a lot of the hardcore Trump base that we know it to be now.

it gave them all an opportunity to just like go and have what the Washington Post described as a mix between a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Talladega.

Like they all just came together and were like, this is our guy.

And when that many people show up to something

People just spent their time to come and stand out in the heat for hours to hear what this guy has to say.

That's not a joke anymore.

There's something real underpinning that.

And of course, in retrospect, I think we understand more that Trump had put his finger on an issue set that was completely unappreciated in American politics.

You had the immigration message,

You had the trade message.

of how China and other countries have hollowed out America's industrial base in these towns across the Rust Belt that no longer exist anymore because we have allowed other countries to do all our manufacturing for us.

And not only, you know, we were, you know, all the economists said, well, you're gonna get cheap goods, but what they didn't talk about was you're also gonna have a crisis of the family across the Midwest of our country where young men, men no longer have a place to go to work

and find meaning and purpose in their lives.

And it's gonna decimate their families economically.

You're gonna see a rise of opioids that we're even seeing today, the drug issues in those communities, all of these things that have happened subsequently.