Last April, lifelong Milford, New Hampshire resident Karl Zahn received a call from his friend, inviting him to a Donald Trump event in Nashua. Zahn was less than pleased. “I said I could never, ever, support that loud mouth,”’ Zahn told Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on Boston Public Radio. “It’s a free breakfast, steak and eggs,” his friend responded. Just like that, Zahn was a convert.
Trump spoke for two hours to a crowd of less than 14 people in the Marriott in Nashua. It took only one free breakfast, a two hour speech and a five minute chat for Zahn to get on board. “When it was over, he came over, and I talked to him,” he said. “And I said, where do I sign up?”
Zahn, who worked on Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, was drawn to Trump in the early days, before the candidate drew huge crowds and struck legitimate fear into the hearts of liberals and pundits alike. Back then, Zahn knew it would be a little different from his McCain days, but he didn’t know exactly what to expect. “I predicted then that this would be a rodeo ride,” he said, “but I had no idea that it was going to be this kind of rodeo ride.”
So why Trump?
“The first thing that struck me is that he was funny,” Zahn said. “He was unscripted, he was self-deprecating, which really surprised me, but everything he said about what is wrong with the country and the economy and all that stuff, it just made sense.”
Even in the early days, Zahn said he felt momentum building. “In May, I brought my son Dominic, who is in his first year in college, to this little Bedford [NH] backyard barbecue with Trump, and I think there were 200 people,” Zahn said. “I told my son, you should come, because something’s happening here, and you’re going to be telling your kids and grandkids about this. That was the last event we had for him with a small crowd, the next thing we did for him in Laconia, we had 3,500 people.”
Zahn did experience a sober moment of doubt in The Donald after Trump made disparaging comments about Senator John McCain, who Zahn had adamantly supported —and also volunteered for— in the past. McCain spent nearly six years in a Vietnamese prison, where he was repeatedly tortured and kept in solitary confinement. At an event in Iowa, Trump made comments that many thought would be his campaign’s death knell. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
That hurt Zahn. “I had to do some heavy soul-searching that weekend,” Zahn said. “In fact, the Trump staff called me that weekend to ask me if I was still on board, I said, ‘I’ll let you know Monday.’”
Even after Trump’s comments, which Zahn described as “awful,” his faith was not shaken. I think there’s a big-hearted guy underneath there, and kind of a marshmallow,” Zahn said. “I look at his kids, they’re really well-behaved, they’re not spoiled brats, I’m looking in the seams for hope that what we’ve seen in the last 6-7 months is campaign bravado and part of his strategy, and it’s been effective, sucking the oxygen out of the room.”
If the McCain comments were presumed to be a death knell, the bell has kept on tolling for Trump, and the real estate mogul just keeps on moving forward
If the McCain comments were presumed to be a death knell, the bell has kept on tolling for Trump, and the real estate mogul just keeps on moving forward. In Trump’s speech announcing his presidential run, he compared Mexican immigrants to “rapists” and “drug dealers”— although, “some of them, I assume, are good people.” Trump has called for a wall on the border of the United States and Mexico (to be paid for by the latter), and a ban on Muslims entering the United States. He has described women as “fat pigs” and “dogs” and suggested we “bomb the shit out of ISIS.”
Zahn says he doesn’t buy it. “I think we all know that he’s not going to ban all Muslims from coming into the country,” Zahn said. “We all know that he doesn’t think all Mexicans are rapists and criminals...but there is a problem in this country when a girl like Kate Steinle gets shot in her father’s arms in San Francisco, I think reasonable, pragmatic people look at that and go, yeah, I think we have a problem here.”
And even if Zahn can’t agree with everything Trump promises, he says it’s more about impact than substance. “I think a lot of it has been to make this flamboyant point,” Zahn said. “You’ve seen it over and over again with him, he says something outrageous, and that’s all anyone talks about for the next ten days. The other guys can’t get noticed.”
Of course, it’s not all about making a big fuss. Another arguably anti-establishment, expressive, big-personality candidate, Bernie Sanders, doesn’t appeal to Zahn at all. “I think Bernie Sanders is the “anti-establishment” vote for Democrats and Liberals, and Trump is the anti-establishment guy for Conservatives,” Zahn said.
You either love Trump, or you hate him, Zahn says. And Trump supporters have known to be pretty vocal. Earlier today, local car dealership CEO Ernie Boch Jr. told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that picking a Republican candidate is like taking a girl home from a bar. “You’ve gotta think of it like this, it’s 2 o’clock in the morning, and there’s a few, y’know, girls at the bar,” Boch told the New Day anchor. “You have to go home with one of them, so you have to pick who you’re with. And I think Mr. Trump is the best qualified.”
Zahn says this analysis isn’t too far off. “Back in May, I described in a Union Leader editorial that my political lust for Trump was akin to a guy running off with a hooker after 35 years in an abusive marriage,” Zahn said. “Kind of looking for love in all the wrong places…. I’m a mess.”
Finally, Zahn left Jim and Margery with an homage to another Trump supporter, “He’s the Maverick for 2016.”
To hear Karl Zahn’s full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
