KEPW News producer trapped by Trump rally crowd

One KEPW producer takes his presidential campaign to New York, not knowing that one of his rivals has booked a rally at Madison Square Garden. On Oct. 28:

DJ Suss D (KEPW, Talk Is Cheap): Yesterday in New York I stumbled into the Madison Square Garden lineup for the Trump rally.

[00:00:20] So, I took a red-eye flight, because that was the cheapest flight. There’s a shuttle that, Motel 6 will take you from the airport right to the motel. So I take that to the motel, drop off my luggage, 8, 9 in the morning, and I’m going to go to New York and learn how to use the transit system in New York. I was going to spend the day doing that, with having no sleep at all.

[00:00:46] I go, ‘How do you get to New York from New Jersey?’ The shuttle guy goes, ‘Just go right out here. There’s a bus. The 112 takes you right there.’ So, the 112 takes me straight to the Port Authority, which is 42nd Street and through the Lincoln Tunnel. And, gorgeous day, freaking stellar day with a light wind, fall in New York, clear skies.

[00:01:12] So I get to the Port Authority and I can see when the bus pulls in, it says ‘Times Square’ right there. So I’m like, okay, I’m going to go to Times Square because I remember Times Square is somewhere around 42nd Street. But I went the wrong way when I got out of the Port Authority. I walked the wrong way down 8th Avenue and ended up at Madison Square Garden (which, by the way, it’s round). I’m worried that my phone’s going to run out of juice and so I’m using a tourist map instead of going on my phone all the time for the map.

[00:01:44] So I’m at Madison Square Garden. I look up and there’s the Empire State Building, right there. So I start walking down 34th, I still am not sure which way I was going.

[00:01:54] So I start heading for the Empire State Building, figuring maybe I can get a tour in there, and as I’m walking along, the police have blocked off all of these areas, and I’m walking, and there’s tourists everywhere. You can tell that there’s tourists. It reminded me of Los Angeles, Hollywood Boulevard, so Hollywood and Vine, and Hollywood and Highland there.

[00:02:15] So now I’m walking along and it’s a huge, diverse people, and there’s Black people selling Trump T-shirts and I’m like, ‘Well, gee, that’s strange,’ because I know nothing about this, did not know that there was a Trump rally at all, had no idea, I hadn’t seen this on the news anywhere. And so I’m going, ‘Hmm, what is going on here?’

[00:02:37] And then the police won’t let me go down 7th, which is where I was going to cut up to go back to Times Square. So okay, I’ll keep going towards the Empire State Building. So now there’s more people selling Trump T-shirts. And then there’s these Asian women there with a sign saying ‘Trump.’

[00:02:55] So then I walk a little further and this guy walks by me and I swear, I go, ‘Wow, this guy looks like someone that I’ve seen at a Trump rally or seen on some Trump video.’ And at that moment, a guy starts waving people in and go ‘Trump rally this way.’

[00:03:10] So I’m like, at first I’m like, ‘Should I do this?’ And then I thought, ‘Well, heck, if they’re going to let me in a Trump rally, I’m going to, let’s see what this is,’ you know? So I’m sitting there going, am I going to get myself killed? Cause I’m wearing this tie-dye T-shirt and everybody else is wearing MAGA hats, Trump T-shirts, and at least a third of them were women, which I was really surprised.

[00:03:30] And now I’m trapped too, I mean, within the barricades in this line, that’s almost as wide as the street. And cops everywhere. And they’re the New York cops—Irish, many of them—with the New York accent. So now the line stops moving and we’re stopped there and I’m waiting about 10, 15 minutes and nothing’s happening.

[00:03:49] And I’m going, you know, ‘I can’t get stuck in this.’ I would have been in Madison Square Garden for the entire day, standing there with no resources, basically, so I bailed and turned around and I was lucky to get out of there even. Because now everybody came up behind me and it filled in about a block worth of people, about an entire New York block, with the people in this barricaded area waiting to get in Madison Square Garden.

[00:04:16] I spend the day in New York and go to an open mic I had at 2:30 in the afternoon, open mic, and went by Bryant Square, waiting for this 2:30 open mic, because like I said, I hit New York at about 9:30, 10.

[00:04:29] So now, on the way back, the demonstration has completely blown up. And I can’t get back to—I’m trying to get back to 42nd Street, the Port Authority, in this cab going from 20th Street up to 42nd Street. So I’m talking to the cabbie, and he’s saying, first of all, he thinks Trump’s going to win, and he’s saying, ultimately, he thinks that white people are going to vote for a white person and men are going to vote for a man.

[00:04:55] So that was my day and then I zipped back, got back here about 6 o’clock, 6 or 7 last night.

[00:04:59] John Q: At the open mic events, he presents his Repressed Older White Man Platform, in his persona as DJ Suss D.

[00:05:08] DJ Suss D (KEPW, Talk Is Cheap): And so, yeah, I got up there and did my political routine and added a little more to it. We mainly need to stop war. There’s a scene in Doctor Strangelove, where they have to have beautiful women in the nuclear survival bunkers because we want to repopulate the world. Well, why do we need any men in the nuclear survival bunkers at all? You could have a sperm bank and have no men in the nuclear survival bunkers. And once we find out we’re not going to be in the nuclear survival bunkers, we’ll figure out something to do. We’ll keep our missiles in our silos where they belong.

[00:05:35] Yeah, I made a speech to no one, but I looked at it kind of as a culture jam, almost, of the Milwaukee Liberal Free Speech Plaza.

[00:05:44] I’m going back out to the open mics tonight. I always pitch DJ Suss D for President at the end. Check out DJSussD.com, you can see all my sustainability stuff.

[00:05:54] So now I’m headed towards Washington, D.C. and the Uhuru movement. I interviewed Jesse Nevel, who is one of the Uhuru 3, being indicted because they’re trying to get Black reparations. So they need your support for that. They’re having an entire march Nov. 1, 2, and 3. They’ve invited me there to cover that, in Washington, D.C.

[00:06:17] John Q: Wearing his tie-dye T-shirt, DJ Suss D wanders into the middle of a Trump crowd just before the now-infamous rally at Madison Square Garden featuring disparaging comments about Puerto Ricans.

You can hear the KEPW News & Talk producer at 4 p.m. every Saturday on his show, Talk is Cheap.