Like a Phish concert but with more grievance, this is what it's like at a Trump rally

At 6:30 a.m. it was still dark in Rome, Ga. But people had been lined up for a long time already, still nearly 12 hours before Trump was set to take the stage at another of his rallies.

Some had waited all night amid the crowd-control gates, in the bottom level of a downtown parking garage. At the very front of the line, Sharon Anderson waited under a blanket on a camp chair.

She told me this was her 50th rally. Why does she attend so many?

"I want to show my support for the best president in the history of this nation," she explained.

Anderson and some friends were all wearing tops styled to look like baseball shirts, with a big "47" on the back (for Trump's quest to be the 47th president) and "FRONT ROW JOES" on the front. Those "Joes" are a team of Trump superfans who get right up front at rallies.

I asked Anderson how she would describe a Trump rally to someone who has never been to one.

"Oh, it's very uplifting, encouraging, exciting," she said. "You just can't describe it verbally."

Many Americans won't share her experience — or her view — and will instead witness Trump events through viral clips of his at times violent, anti-democratic rhetoric — for example, his recent dehumanizing language about migrants and comments about a "bloodbath" should Joe Biden win a second term.

And that's important. But nine years in, these surreal events say so much more about the continued Trump phenomenon.

A Trump rally has the feel of an all-day pep rally mixed with a megachurch service — except with Trumpism as the religion. The rallies are places where a movement largely defined by grievance can be together, away from opponents — not to mention assertions that Trump lies and is harmful to democracy.

They are places to see