Donald Trump Happy hour at Trump Bar:

If anyone needed a drink this week, it was Trump supporters. It was the tail end of a bad stretch in the press –Ukraine!Extreme Vetting!
Roger Ailes! – but in many ways it wasn’t anomalously bad; Donald Trump hasbeen on a water slide since the convention. On Wednesday, after news of yet anothercampaign shakeup, I wondered if his supporters had started to see the beginning of the end. So I headed to Trump Bar, a rare refuge of Trumpism in liberal Manhattan, to find out if they were drowning their sorrows.Though the midtown sky was robin’s egg blue, inside the dark bar on the ground floor of Trump Tower, near Central Park, a pair of polo-shirted tourists on barstools were watching dark clouds gather on the television screen tuned to the weather station. “A storm’s coming,” one said to the other, sipping a whisky soda. The other mangrunted. Happy hour at the Trump Bar, I discovered, was neither happy nor an hour. The daily promotion stretched from 4-7pm; the clientele was anxious.
Andy, a young man who wore his black baseball cap backwards, polo shirt white and cargo shorts baggy, was staring into hisphone. Andy was from Minnesota. This washis first time inNew York. “I haven’t seen much,” he said. “I saw the 9/11 [memorial] and then I came here.” Beside him sat a half-empty bottle of Brooklyn Sorachi Ace, two camouflage Make America Great Again hats he had purchased from the Trump store, and a pile of Trump-Pence bumper stickers. “Yeah, I support Donald,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”Honey Heil and Marie Smith. Heil said of Trump’s border wall proposal: ‘I want a wall that goes 6 feet down and 10 feet up! It’ll getdone!’ Photograph: Joshua David Stein for the GuardianI asked Andy about the bad news surrounding his candidate this week, but before Andy could respond, his friend appeared. “Look man,” he told me, “I’m just trying to show him a good time. We’re not here to talk. Tell him ‘no comment’.”
“No comment,” said Andy. Trump supporters appeared to follow the same media strategy as their candidate: don’t answer questions you don’t like –shut them outinstead.During happy hour, wine is $6 a glass, draught beer is $5 and cocktails are $7. But none of the signature or classic cocktails (The Billionaire Martini, $20; the Boardroom,$17; and the “You’re Fired”, $15) are included June Smith, 70, was content with her wine.
Smith was visiting New York from State College, Pennsylvania – part of what she calls the “Red T” of the Keystone State. She was optimistic that Trump would defeat Clinton in the election, despite his week of bad press. “I’m excited,” she told me. “Usually Pennsylvania is blue but this election it’s purple!” (I refrained from informing her most polls find Clinton with a4- to 11-point lead overTrump there.) I asked what she liked about Trump. “He getsit,” she explained.
But her gruff son-in-law, who told me his name was “Forget About Me”, quickly interrupted.
“No more talking,” he said. Smith smiled apologetically and reached for the sandwich. I grabbed my beer and wandered off.I soon came across a a quartet of ladies from Savannah, Georgia, who had settled into four chairs opposite Andy and his friend. One, Honey Heil, 74, was a vivacious and vociferous Trump supporter. Andy gaveher a campaign bumper sticker, which she proudly attached to her shirt. “Look, Donald! We’re here!” she crowed enthusiastically. Heil, a retired school nurse, was undeterred by Trump’s so-called “meltdown”. She excitedly laid out a strategy to bring women –a demographic that has proven difficultfor him to win over. “I can’t believe girls are for Clinton! Put out the navy blue dress!” shesaid. “They’ll go ding-dong!” Her friend, Marie Smith, was equally enthusiastic about the Trump-Pence ticket.
“What about Pence?” she said. “Doesn’t he just look like aVP?”As soon as Donald is president he’ll be surrounded by the best andthe brightestHoney HeilTheir companion, a woman who wore all denim and asked not to be named, was voting for Trump for national security. “God wants us to be safe,” she told me. “Donald is the one who knows how to keep us safe.”Smith said she was voting for Trump for economic reasons.
“I see Clinton’s side of things but it’s in my interest to vote Trump,” she said. “Why should my husband, who owns a small business, have to pay for other people who don’t even have jobs?” Butshe thought some of Trump’s more outrageous proposals were more smoke than fire.“I don’t think we’ll ever get a wall,” she said. Heil, however, was more full-throated in her support.
“I want a wall that goes 6 feet downand 10 feet up! It’ll get done!” Asked how Trump could possibly execute such an ambitious project, she just shrugged: “As soon as Donald is president he’ll be surrounded by the best and the brightest.”Three hours into my visit, most of the bar had pretty much emptied and happy hour had ended – but the ladies from Savannah didn’t seem to mind. There was nowhere else for them to go, anyway. Outside, DonaldTrump waslookingmore and more like a loser. But in here, he was still a winner. So they summoned the waiter and ordered another round.