Reporting from Cleveland — A flammable brew of populist anger, a candidate’s provocative remarks and disruptive protesters found a fuse, and the result, at what was to be a Donald Trump event in Chicago this weekend, was an explosion that continued to reverberate through the presidential campaign Saturday.
In a contest that has had far more than its share of drama, the question is: What happens next?
Trump’s Republican opponents rushed to denounce him over the chaotic turn Friday night, and there was an urgency to their positions. Primaries will be held Tuesday in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and Missouri — and the campaigns of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will probably end if they fail to win their home states. A substantial series of victories by Trump on Tuesday would move him a major step closer to a nomination that so many in his party are trying to block.
Advertisement
As Trump himself suggested, the latest controversy very likely will cement support for him among his backers, who have already weathered disputes over his caustic criticisms of ethnic groups, women, the disabled and the pope, to mention a few. Their allegiance is apt only to harden if they feel that their leader, and they by extension, are under attack.
1/56
The podium is empty after a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was canceled at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
2/56
Protesters line up above the Eisenhower Expressway after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign stop at the UIC Pavilion was canceled because of security concerns March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
3/56
Protesters mock Donald Trump supporters who appeared stuck in the venue’s parking garage after the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign rally March 11, 2016, at UIC Pavilion was canceled because of security concerns.
(Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
4/56
A protester blows smoke on a Donald Trump supporter outside the Trump International Hotel & Tower on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
5/56
Donald Trump supporters and protesters clash March 11, 2016, outside the UIC Pavilion after the rally for the Republican presidential candidate was canceled.
(E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
6/56
Donald Trump supporter Birgitt Peterson, center, of Yorkville, argues with protesters on March 11, 2016, outside the UIC Pavilion after the rally for the Republican presidential candidate was canceled.
(E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
7/56
Protesters speak out during a Donald Trump campaign rally March 11, 2016, inside the UIC Pavilion.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
8/56
Donald Trump supporters and protesters clash March 11, 2016, outside the UIC Pavilion after the Republican presidential candidate’s rally was canceled.
(E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
9/56
Protesters celebrate after the rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was canceled at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
10/56
Donald Trump supporters and protesters clash March 11, 2016, outside the UIC Pavilion after the rally for the Republican presidential candidate was canceled.
(E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
11/56
A man leaves the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, after the rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was canceled because of security concerns.
(E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
12/56
Donald Trump supporters and protesters clash March 11, 2016, outside the UIC Pavilion after the rally for the Republican presidential candidate was canceled.
(E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
13/56
A protester shows off ripped Donald Trump campaign signs after it was announced the rally for the Republican presidential candidate was canceled March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
14/56
Protesters celebrate after it was announced that a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was canceled March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
15/56
Protesters and Donald Trump supporters struggle outside the UIC Pavilion in Chicago after it was announced that the rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was canceled March 11, 2016.
(E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
16/56
Protesters cheer after it was announced Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s speech was canceled March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
17/56
An official with the Donald Trump campaign walks away from the lectern after announcing that the event was canceled March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
18/56
A Donald Trump supporter argues with protesters outside the canceled Trump rally March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
19/56
Donald Trump supporters stand outside a Trump rally after it was canceled at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
20/56
A Donald Trump sign lies on the floor after a campaign rally at the UIC Pavilion for the Republican presidential candidate was canceled March 11, 2016.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
21/56
Police detain a man as clashes continue outside the Donald Trump rally March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
22/56
A protester holds up a ripped Donald Trump sign before the start of a rally for the Republican presidential candidate at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
23/56
Protesters gather outside a Donald Trump rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
24/56
A Donald Trump supporter argues with protesters outside a campaign rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
25/56
Donald Trump supporters hold their signs after an announcement canceling the rally for the Republican presidential candidate at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Brian Nguyen / Chicago Tribune)
26/56
Protesters gather outside a Donald Trump rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
27/56
Donald Trump supporters wait in line outside the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
28/56
Protesters march outside a Donald Trump rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
29/56
Protesters gather outside a Donald Trump rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
30/56
Protesters gather outside a Donald Trump rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
31/56
Donald Trump supporters react after a rally at the UIC Pavilion for the Republican presidential candidate was canceled March 11, 2016.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
32/56
Protesters wearing shirts reading “Muslims United Against Trump” are escorted out the UIC Pavilion in Chicago prior to the start of a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on March 11, 2016.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
33/56
A demonstrator is removed by Chicago police during a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
34/56
A man and a young girl trying to enter the Donald Trump rally ask for an escort from a Chicago police officer as protesters gather outside the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
35/56
Linda Slabaugh, of Romeoville, a nurse and attorney, attends a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
36/56
People wait for the start of a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
37/56
People gather at the UIC Pavilion for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rally March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
38/56
A Donald Trump supporter moves a jacket upon getting settled in at the UIC Pavilion for a rally for the Republican presidential candidate March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
39/56
Ed Landmichl, of Chicago’s South Side, waits for the start of a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
40/56
Donald Trump supporter Valerie Schmitt, of Naperville, gets settled before Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
41/56
People wear socks adorned with the U.S. flag while attending a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
42/56
People wait for the start of a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
43/56
Marco Maltbia, of Chicago’s South Side, waits for the beginning of a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
44/56
People arrive for a campaign rally at the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, to support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
45/56
Brian Wilkinson, 35, holds an American flag while Donald Trump supporters enter the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, prior to the Republican presidential candidate’s rally.
(Armando Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
46/56
Donald Trump supporters line up March 11, 2016, at the UIC Pavilion in advance of a political rally.
(Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
47/56
Button vendors Lorie Levi, left, and Deanne Golembiewski sell Donald Trump for President buttons outside the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
48/56
Jack Righeima, 15, left, and Andrew Alessia, 18, students from Aurora Central Catholic High School, play Trump the Game on March 11, 2016, outside the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
49/56
June Pitts, center, of Oak Forest, waits in line outside the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
50/56
Robert Maricle, of Peoria, stands in line outside the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, for a rally with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
51/56
Donald Trump supporter John Gora, of Chicago, proudly shows his T-shirt that reads “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Democrat” as he stands in line outside the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago for a rally with the Republican presidential candidate.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
52/56
Julie Contreras, from left; her daughter Ariana Aprim, 18; Salvador Contreras; and Gilberto Melchor-Sanchez hold a prayer vigil March 11, 2016, across the street from the UIC Pavilion in Chicago. The group, representing the League of United Latin American Citizens, is holding the vigil in anticipation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign stop.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
53/56
Ariana Aprim, 18, with the League of United Latin American Citizens, shuts off electric lights at the site of a prayer vigil March 11, 2016, near the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
54/56
A small shrine is placed at the site of a prayer vigil across the street from the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
55/56
Julie Contreras, with the League of United Latin American Citizens, sets up a sign near a prayer vigil across the street from the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago. Activists assembled in anticipation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign stop in the evening.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
56/56
Kayla Utley, left, of Center Point, Iowa, holds a photograph of herself with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from a campaign stop as she stands in line outside the UIC Pavilion on March 11, 2016, in Chicago. With Utley are Trump supporters Giovanni Montalbano, center, of Park Ridge, and Travis Klinefelter, of Dubuque, Iowa.
(Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
Appearing at three rallies Saturday, Trump maintained the political style and message that has propelled him to front-runner status. At those events in Ohio and Missouri, he emerged unrepentant and defiant, blaming protesters, President Obama and other Democrats for the divisions that pushed the campaign to a new level of tension Friday night.
Advertisement
But two longer-term issues now threaten him, and those become more difficult as time goes on without a change in strategy by Trump.
Reading the political moment with far more dexterity than anyone else running for president this year, Trump has succeeded to this point on the strength of his many loyalists and a fractured opposition.
He has excelled in playing competitors against one another and has benefited as they fought among themselves for the role of prime challenger. A fight against just one of them — say, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, if Kasich and Rubio falter — focuses the race in a different way and could result in all of the anti-Trump vote coalescing around one person. Trump’s opponents have hoped that since his support in primaries so far has rarely risen above the low 40% range, a one-on-one race might allow victory for the anti-Trump candidacy.
Advertisement
That could be a long-shot. But if Trump does win the nomination, he faces a much bigger problem, one that the escalation of protests around his events highlights: Having risen to the role of front-runner by playing to the emotions of a vocal, aggrieved minority of his party, how does he pivot toward a broader constituency that is less taken with his brand?
That broad constituency is becoming more and more difficult for any politician to command as each party’s voters go to their partisan corners in growing numbers. In a 2014 study, the Pew Research Center found that 27% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 36% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents felt that the other party’s positions “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being,” a stark data point. And voters who felt that way were more likely to take part in the primaries.
Appealing to a wider group in a general election is particularly difficult for candidates like Trump, one of a long line of political figures who have played on the emotions of the crowd, often by using racial cues or outright statements of racial antagonism to enrage their followers and outrage their opponents.
This is a particularly fraught period for the country: Economic displacement has left many fearful and upset, at the same time tensions are rising over cultural shifts wrought by changes in the nation’s demographics. Those economic and cultural insecurities have combined to provide a receptive audience for Trump’s surprisingly strong candidacy, but the tactics he has used to appeal to that audience have also alienated huge numbers of voters.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last week found that two-thirds of voters overall — anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats — couldn’t see a circumstance under which they’d vote for Trump in November. A separate NBC News/SurveyMonkey tracking poll found a large percentage of nonwhite voters, the growing chunk of the electorate, were anti-Trump.
According to the survey, 86% of African American voters and 75% of Latino voters had an unfavorable view of Trump. All told, 7 in 10 nonwhite voters said they had a “very” unfavorable view of the man who, before Saturday, had won 14 of the 22 Republican contests.
Advertisement
Not surprisingly, black, Latino and Muslim young people were at the core of Friday’s protests that led Trump to cancel a rally that he had scheduled at the University of Illinois campus in Chicago.
The visceral opposition that Trump has stirred among minority Americans contradicts his self-description as a “uniter” — he accuses Obama of being “the great divider” — and raises the question of whether he is able, or even wants, to make the kind of sharp turn in his strategy that might assuage the anger that has helped fuel his campaign.
So far, Trump has not backed down from any of the incendiary comments he has made about Mexicans, Muslims and people in China and Japan who he says are taking American jobs. Those comments, and his vow to build a wall on the Mexican border, have created an irreparable impediment to any steps he might try to take to broaden beyond his mostly white base.
Part of the horror felt by Republicans watching the spectacle over the weekend was that its imagery recalled a period the party has wanted to escape.
At the end of the last presidential campaign, party leaders drew up a report asserting that the next nominee had to have strong appeal to the young, to minority voters — particularly Latinos — and to women, three groups with whom 2012 nominee Mitt Romney did poorly. Trump’s candidacy has been the antithesis of that, as women and Latinos have not just been ignored but insulted by him.
Trump protesters, having gotten the candidate to cancel one event, are unlikely to stop trying to disrupt him. At all three rallies he held Saturday, Trump was interrupted repeatedly by catcalling and shouting from opponents.
Advertisement
The candidate ended up shouting some version of “Get out!” dozens of times. Those shouts stirred his supporters, who cheered him on. But to the rest of the country, they broadcast the image of an angry white man yelling at members of the same young, minority and women voter blocs that Republicans said they wanted to attract. If Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, that image probably will prove a heavy burden.
Times staff writer Michael Finnegan in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Cathleen Decker is a former politic analyst for the Los Angeles Times who wrote about the Trump administration and the themes, demographics and personalities central to national and state contests. In 2016 she covered her 10th presidential campaign; she has also covered seven races for governor and a host of U.S. Senate and local elections. She directed The Times’ 2012 presidential campaign coverage. Decker left The Times in 2018.
