A New Year of Possibilities

2016 was a year of many firsts and many lasts, one of many historic feats and faults, but above all, 2016 was filled with lessons.

We all have our reasons to either love 2016 (for me, I graduated college!) or hate 2016 (world turmoil), but both can give us hope for the year ahead. 2017 will undoubtedly have its challenges, but people must rally behind the idea that there is always tomorrow, and as long as there is another breathing day, a new opportunity to change the world for the better.

I’ll leave you to your festivities, but keep hope in mind during 2017.

The day before the world changed

On a chilly Monday evening, Robert Morss was already making plans for a party.

“Tomorrow is the big day,” said Morss. “At my house, I’m hosting this shindig. Show up, drink Yuengling,” he said. “A requirement,” he added, “since Yuengling endorsed Donald Trump.”

Tomorrow would be Tuesday, November 8, 2016 — Election Day.

After his open invitation, Morss, chairman of the Penn State Bull-Moose Party, went on to ask members during their executive meeting about Eric Trump’s visit to State College earlier in the day. Morss was not allowed to be present by local party officials for Trump’s visit at the GOP office downtown because he failed to phone bank and canvass like many of his group’s members did throughout the semester.

“Is he a good dude or is he all talk?” Morss asked.

“It came off as sincere and genuine as could be expected for somebody who probably did that at least 200 times in the last three weeks,” responded member Vincent Cucchiara.

“They weren’t supposed to have media, but then they ended up having media and he did some interviews,” said Chris Baker, who handles public relations for the group and was instrumental in setting up the group’s most talked-about events over the semester, including a wall set up around the American flag at Penn State’s Old Main Lawn.

“It’s cool because that’ll come out tomorrow [in the newspapers], on Election Day,” he said.

During the visit, Eric Trump, along with a few secret service agents, stepped outside the GOP office for a few minutes to meet supporters swarming the building. “Thank you all so much for coming,” Trump said to the crowd, who were mixing chants of “Trump!” and “lock her up!”

“Tomorrow, we’re going to make America great again!” he said to more cheers.

After hearing more reactions to Trump’s visit, Morss turned to the perceived slight by the local officials.

“I have no animosity whatsoever to these comments that were made about me not doing jack sh — ,” he said. “Like, I don’t care. Frankly, they can go f — — themselves.”

“Getting Trump elected, that’s our main prerogative,” he added.

One grudge moved to the other during the meeting.

“Why do we allow media in there?” asked another student, Kyle Dulski. Baker explained that the exposure was good, as long as it was controlled.

“They should’ve just told Patrick Cines to f — — off,” Dulski responded. “He’s the guy who released our sh — . They should’ve given him the boot.”

Cines, a reporter for the student-run Penn State blog Onward State, broke the story of a group chat among several Bull-Moose Party members, including former Chairman Dmitri Loutsik, engaging in vulgar conversations.

Messages included rape jokes and homophobic slurs. “[The Penn State College Republicans] are just bending over with their pants at their ankles so Hillary can anal rape them with a strap on. I guess Straw is into that,” one message read, referring to openly gay College Republicans President Michael Straw.

The situation was the Bull-Moose Party’s “Access Hollywood” moment.

“I don’t remember being a part of those messages,” Loutsik said after the election with a smile. “I think that most people, when they talk in private amongst friends, they’re going to sound different than if they would talk in the public realm,” he said.

“I don’t think you should be infiltrating someone’s private conversations,” Baker said. Besides, Baker adds, “they wrongfully attributed it to the group!” He said that although members of the group were in the conversation, it shouldn’t be seen as a representative view of the group overall.

Even with denial of any involvement, Loutsik said that he learned from the ordeal. “In some sense, I am semi-glad that it happened because the whole experience did teach me some life lessons that I have since taken to heart.”

A week after its release, Loutsik and Vice Chairman Felippe Maher both resigned, and Morss was chosen as chairman with less than a month to go before election day.

26 days after his election, Morss wanted to share some final thoughts before the group adjourned for the night, and possibly for good.

“The fact of the matter is, I love you guys,” he said.

“As the Chairman of this club, this is where my heart is. The election aside — Trump be damned — we want to Make America Great Again. That’s what I’m focused on.”

Morss made one last plea to the light audience of nine. “Tomorrow, if you have a minute to yourself, dedicate it to the Republicans taking the White House, the senate and the Supreme Court,” he said. “Get your friends on it, get your family on it. Let them know that this is our one shot. We’ve got 24 hours to have a hand in the way our country’s direction is headed in the next four years, eight years,” he said. “If it even lasts that long.”

47 hours later, Morss convened the next general meeting.

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force,” said Morss in a packed room with a sea of red hats and reporters clicking away in the back. He was quoting George Washington. “Like fire, a troublesome servant, and a fearful master. Never for a moment, should it be left to irresponsible action.”

“And last night, my friends, we all confirmed that it will not be for at least the next four years,” Morss added, raising a balled fist. “Donald Trump!” he exclaimed to a jubilant audience.

“I know that the stats say that Centre county voted blue — I think it was rigged,” he joked. “Everyone worked so hard to get that man in office and I’m proud of each and every one of you here. Thank you guys so much,” he said.

“Let’s Make America Great Again!”

Shocked political elites now envision the Trump administration

One month after the election of Donald Trump, members of the political “elite,” including the leader of a political student organization, are still trying to make sense of the head-spinning result.

“He was right,” said McCourtney Institute for Democracy Managing Editor Christopher Beem. “Everyone thought that the fact that Donald Trump was getting so many people at his rallies was not indicative of just how many people were supporting him,” he said. “And we were all wrong.”

Beem said that Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote shows both how divided the country is and how close the election was. “Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2 million [votes]. That’s not a trivial thing,” he said, but added, “it has as much to do with where those votes were as it does how many there were.”

“All of the polls-even though they were wrong-said that Hillary was going to come out on top,” said Kevin Salamon, president of the College Progressives. “So Donald Trump winning was surprising.”

Salamon said that he had a preference for Clinton, but adds, “I wasn’t a huge fan of Hillary.”

“I was very surprised,” said Robert Berkman, a political science professor at Penn State.

“Although in retrospect, the warning signs were there that the election could go that way,” he said. “I really did not prepare myself for that outcome. I thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win, and potentially was going to win quite handedly.”

The College Progressives chose not to endorse either major party candidate, and Salamon has no qualms about stating his distaste for both candidates.

“I’m quite afraid of what [Trump] is going to do to the country,” he said, but quickly turned his aim to the left. “I wasn’t as surprised as much as one would expect because the Democratic Party has just not been up to snuff,” he said. “Ever since Bill Clinton and taking on neoliberalism, they just abandoned the working class.”

Salamon said that the DNC ignored a large swath of the population in favor of the wealthy, and joked, “apparently white working class people get really pissed off if you ignore them for a short period of time.”

Salamon also claimed that the public distrust of the DNC was something of the committee’s own making. “[During the primary season] I was working for the Sanders campaign and then you find out that it was corrupt from the very beginning,” he said. “They were backing Hillary and Bernie never really had a shot under their rules.” Sanders garnered 43% of the popular vote in the 2016 Democratic primary, according to election site The Green Papers.

Salamon found the idea of progressives needing to quiet their misgivings about Clinton after clinching the nomination to avoid a Trump presidency to be an unfair burden on them. “If you want to become president, you better damn well be worth it,” he said.

“Hillary Clinton is not an inspiring or even eminently likable person,” he added.

Salamon held an election watch party at this house, and his fellow college progressives were also not happy with the result. “They were all pretty distraught,” he said.

“My goal from the start is that I’m unhappy with the Democratic Party, I don’t think they’re a party of the people and I don’t think they’re a progressive party,” Salamon said, who was formerly the vice president of the College Democrats and resigned in order to run Penn State Students for Bernie, and later the College Progressives.

“My job is to push them,” he said. “I’m not just going to fall in line because they lost this eminently winnable battle by their own faults, and just do whatever they tell me to do.”

Salamon wrote in Bernie Sanders on Election Day. “I don’t regret that decision,” he added.

“Life’s too short to be so boring,” he said. “I’m going to fight for the world that I want, that I envision. I’m not going to compromise my values and play some sort of game with politics.”

Salamon believes that Trump is playing a game, but on his supporters. “He’s already reneged on promises even to his own supporters,” he said.

The Trump phenomenon was so strong that Penn State decided to approve a one-credit course on the then-Republican nominee.

Beem taught the course on Donald Trump at Penn State this semester, and the class met one last time in class after the election and described the general reaction in one word.

“Stunned,” he said.

He found the class to be incredibly informative and wishes to have similar classes in the future. “A lot of people were like, ‘are you sure you want to do that?’ and I’m really glad we did,” he said. “I feel like the students in that class were really lucky.” He adds, “I feel like I was really lucky. I learned a lot in that class, listening to people and hearing their perspectives.”

“We should be doing stuff like this more often,” he said. “Trying to engage important, current issues using the disciplines that all of us bring. I think that’s a good thing.”

One question before the election was whether Trump was fit temperamentally to hold the office, which often spawned the debate of whether he could act presidential.

“Maybe he’s going to redefine what presidential means,” Berkman said, “because he does not act presidential as I’ve always thought of it.”

If his transition is any indication, Berkman is full of concerns about a Donald Trump presidency.

“I’m taken aback by his loose language,” Berkman said. “I usually think of new presidents in particular as being very, very careful with their language. What presidents say can move markets, can move stock prices, can move countries,” he said. “It can move you to war.”

Berkman has seen no change in Trump’s demeanor.

“He’s continuing to behave as if he’s in campaign mode and saying things that would have wild implications,” he said.

Berkman also has some concerns about the president-elect’s relationship with the press, or lack thereof. “I don’t think he respects the role of the media in a democracy. I’ve never heard him talk about the role of the media in a democracy in any way that suggests that he does appreciate the role that they play,” he said.

He also finds the absence of formal introductions to his cabinet to be especially strange.

“He has not bothered, when these cabinet appointments have been introduced, to go out to a podium with them and talk about his objectives and why these people have been picked, and what they will bring to American politics,” he said.

He also noted that Trump hasn’t held a press conference since winning the election, which is highly unusual based on recent precedent, throwing in, “I think his relationship with Breitbart and InfoWars is downright terrifying.”

Perhaps Berkman’s biggest concern with a President Trump is what he calls Trump’s “very frightening relationship to the truth.”

“I have been really struck by the wiliness of those around him, namely Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, to try to explain away as okay his throwing out of conspiracy theories and arguments that are factually not true,” he said. “I think that’s a ridiculously dangerous thing for a president to do, and I think the media is missing the story about why he’s doing some of this.”

Berkman suspects that the cabinet appointments, which he called “extremely conservative,” to be all of Vice President-elect Pence’s making.

“If you look at what’s been going on right now, most of these cabinet picks, they’re coming from Mike Pence. This is a Mike Pence cabinet,” he said. “It’s a highly anti-gay and lesbian rights cabinet. Other than [defense secretary pick James Mattis] I think almost every one of them is strongly anti-gay.”

“He’s Dick Cheney on steroids,” Berkman said.

Soon after the election, Hillary Clinton called for Americans to have an open mind on the president elect, but Salamon is not buying it.

“I’m not so naive to think that he’s going to change his mind and start doing the right thing,” he said. “If there’s something we can work together on, fine. I’ll support that policy. But generally, I assume that we’re going to spending most of our time just fighting against what he’s trying to do.”

“Everyone should fear a Trump presidency,” Salamon said. Last semester, he studied abroad in Chile, and found the climate, both environmentally and politically, to be more pleasant than back home.

“I don’t think anything good is going to come of this. I might just go to Chile again and teach English for a few years,” he joked.

What the future holds

Editor’s note:

When I started this website exactly three months ago today, I had ambitions that were as exciting as they were foolish. I wanted to cover everything related to this group: their meetings, their friendships and their hardships. I also wanted to get to know Trump supporters and I figured that starting with understanding a small bubble would lead to the understanding of the boiling movement that has, as we’ve seen, taken over the most powerful parts of our government. I will leave the readers to decide whether I have given them at least a sliver of insight into this.

But now, as the semester is ending and with it my time at Penn State as a journalism student, the end of material for this website is nearing. I started the website with the intention of covering the final 50 days of the campaign, but the election has ended and coverage has continued because this group is just that interesting. I look forward to reading how this group is covered by campus press as the new administration looms. I hope they are treated with respect, fairness and an open mind.

The website schedule will go as follows:

Next week, the final original posts will be published and serve as a retrospective on the semester that was for the Bull-Moose Party, as well as a look at where they’ll go when classes resume in January.

I look forward to starting my career soon, and perhaps it will be Inside the Train from Washington D.C. If so, stay tuned, and if not, still stay tuned.

Thank you.

Junior Gonzalez

Inside the Train

The Bull-Moose Party — Photo Essay

For much of the Fall semester, Penn State students supporting Donald Trump for president worked on his behalf relentlessly. It was not without its share of setbacks, however, but the core group of students — about 20 in all — logged in hundreds of hours at the local GOP Victory office, and their hard work paid off in part with the president-elect’s stunning victory in Pennsylvania. The following images represent several moments of the group’s activities before, during and after election day.

Podcasts have their 9/11 moment on 11/9

If you listen to any podcasts related to news, you have likely heard a post-election show regarding the election of Donald Trump, and while the shows were planned, the content of it was not — or at least changed dramatically before the show actually went out for consumption.

President-elect Trump’s shocking victory had reverberations in the podcast world, leaving commentators with time to perform pre-written lines at the closest to what could qualify as speechless — their tone.

“It’s 3:30 a.m. in the newsroom. And we’re in a state of shock,” said Michael Barbaro, reporter and host of The New York Times election podcast, The Run-Up. “This was not supposed to happen — the biggest political upset of the past 50 years.”

“This was a stunner of an election,” said Kristin Roberts, national editor and host of POLITICO’s “Nerdcast” podcast, with a special emphasis on “stunner.”

“Where do you start with an election like this? It is one for the ages,” said POLITICO’s Charlie Mahtesian, who sounded both tired and astounded at the words he was uttering. “I think it’s bigger than the Dewey and Truman upset. I mean, I can’t even think of a comparable upset like this where we were all so wrong in so many ways,” he said.

“Those polls were a disaster,” later interjected Roberts. “And it wasn’t just the public polling. The Republican party polling was completely inaccurate.”

“Okay, so it’s the polling — we were wrong about the ground game — guy literally had no ground game at all, turned out not to matter. Imagine what his results would’ve been with a ground game? So, we were wrong about that,” continued Mahtesian. “We were wrong about him getting in the race — nobody believed he would get in the race. We were wrong about him in the primaries. Nobody believed he could beat that field. We were wrong about everything, and where do you go from there?”

“I think it’s an incredible moment where the American people — it’s a repudiation — of not just the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and the establishment. It’s a repudiation of the media. It’s a repudiation of the pollsters. It is the American people saying, ‘We are done with you. We are completely done. You don’t listen to us and what you write and what you say do not reflect how we feel,’” Roberts continued.

“It’s the biggest bird-flipping in human history,” said Mahtesian to some chuckles from his co-hosts.

The missed warnings were echoed on The New Yorker’s “Political Scene” podcast with host Dorothy Wickenden. “Donald Trump kept telling the country he was building a movement,” said Wickenden to writer Evan Osnos, who wrote a story for the magazine back in September titled, “President Trump’s First Term.”

Wickenden continued, “You described what a Trump presidency would look like. At the time, when we were working on it, it seemed like almost a fanciful thought experiment,” to which Osnos replied, “That story went from being a thought experiment to being something closer to a roadmap for our political predicament.”

“So much of the conventional wisdom of political science — and not conventional wisdom but empirically demonstrated findings of political science — have been upended by this election,” remarked New Yorker writer Jill Lepore. “The number of columns people wrote over the last year about the decline of the Republican party completely failed to see that it is the Democratic party that has been destroyed.”

On WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show,” host Brian Lehrer started his show with a simple statement. “So…Now what?” he remarked. Lehrer took calls since 6 a.m. the morning Trump won the election. “We’ve been hearing people cry and stammer about what they’re going to tell their children,” he said, and received a statement from filmmaker Ken Burns which he read out to his audience:

“The divisions evident in this political season can be healed. Let’s find what Lincoln said were ‘the better angels of our nature.’”

When Lehrer brought in his first guest, New York Times columnist Gail Collins, he asked her for her reaction, while stating his own astonishment within the question.

“Where do you even begin?” asked Lehrer. “It’s so disorienting.”

“It is pretty disorienting,” chuckled Collins, later saying, “we’ve gotten through many, many other things. We’ve known known Donald Trump all our lives around here, and we’ve known, in general, that he’s a man of many defects, but he is not an insane person. We’ve had weird presidents before, and we’ll get through this one too.”

“Well, I guess that’s, um, the basis of hope,” reacted Lehrer. “That presidencies are temporary. Also, that the responsibility of being in power tends to moderate people,” he said.

“But maybe the scariest thing is that this president — without any experience, with his impulsive tendencies and everything else — also has this Republican congress now. So where are the checks and balances going to come from?”

When Lehrer started taking calls, the reaction of dread was overbearing. The first caller, ironically named Serene, reacted this way: “I’ve been trying for the past two hours; I could not even walk into my classroom and teach,” she said. “This is one of the saddest days in my life, and I feel like there’s a lot of people sharing this view.”

“I wanted to ask you Brian, What kind of a mandate does Donald Trump have when he lost the popular vote, that’s number one,” said another caller named Steven. “The thing that’s most troubling is this coalition of hatred that this guy has cultivated,” he said, following up with an example. “I think it’s informative to listen to C-SPAN in the morning, and to hear some of the phone calls coming from the middle of the country, from people who voted for him,” he said. “People were saying that the liar and the dishonest person was not Donald Trump, it was Hillary Clinton. There was no talk about Chinese steel or the clothing line was not manufactured in the United States,” Steven said. “There was none of that.”

“Donald Trump is our president-elect,” reacted Jody Avirgan, host of FiveThirtyEight’s Elections podcast. “[It’s] a stunning turn in American politics and society, and that is the word I am left with today: stunned, and honestly, somewhat numb, both intellectually and emotionally.”

“Um…Boy,” said FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver. “Sometimes things come together in a way that a number of things have to come together, but all these things were foreseeable.” He noted that while the odds were in Clinton’s favor, she didn’t have a very large lead in the polls — around 3 percent, and was underperforming in critical swing states, with leads that were well within the margin of error in most polls. That margin, apparently, was enough to flip the script on this entire campaign.

Boy, indeed.

Bull-Moose Party convene one last time this semester

The Bull-Moose Party discussed a meeting with the Black and Latino Male Empowerment Group, their new mission statement and the Bill of Rights to cap off a tumultuous, election season semester.

Chairman Robert Morss and several other members arrived at the group’s regular meeting room in the Willard Building on Wednesday fresh from a discussion with the Black and Latino student group in the Grange Building from 6–7:30 p.m.

He expressed feelings of unfair treatment, but also said “they’re not our enemies, they’re other students,” and that although they disagreed on many issues, they shook hands in the name of civil dialogue.

Morss moved on to discussing the Bull-Moose Party’s mission statement. In a previous meeting, he asked members to come up with ideas to create a new post-election statement. With the suggestions, he presented a preliminary statement, which goes as follows:

“We Are the beacon on campus that will dedicate our time and energy to educating our fellow colleagues on the rights bestowed to them by Our Creator. We Are the club that illuminates the responsibilities of a Citizen of the United States of America. We Are the voice of authority to disseminate virtues of limited government, promote accountability, and spread a constitutional conservative ideology on campus.”

“We Are Penn State,”

“We Are the Bull moose Party.”

Immediately after reading the statement, Morss asked for questions, and a member immediately questioned why the words “Our Creator” are included.

“It’s in the Declaration of Independence,” Morss responded, “so that’s why it’s in there.”

“I would suggest keeping this mission statement secular,” the student responded.

“Your creator is whatever you define it as,” said Bull-Moose Party Communications Director Chris Baker.

“Your mother and your father can be your creator,” said Secretary Dom DeCinti to laughs by some in the room.

Morss agreed with this logic. “It’s up to your interpretation,” he said. “Tell me who your creator is and we can both shake hands on it.”

“I think this club is very diverse in what it wants to accomplish,” he added.

The diversity applied to this issue.

“I actually have no problems with “our creator,” said Vincent Cucchiara. He agreed with the idea of open interpretation but added, “I would not capitalize it.”

Cucchiara also wasn’t for the word “ideology” being included. “It sounds culty,” he said.

Kylie Thomas expressed concerns about the alleged religious reference. “It’s a little out there,” she said. “I feel like it’s going to turn people off.”

Members continued to disagree and soon the dialogue deteriorated, with all voices speaking over one another. Morss stopped the commotion and decided to move on to other topics, promising to address the statement next semester.

After describing plans for a shooting trip on Saturday, Morss described his goals for the trip. “This is going to be a good opportunity for us not to only socialize, but also to give you guys a better understanding firearms and to be the most dangerous club on campus,” he said.

After a history lesson, Morss held a lesson on the Bill of Rights before adjourning for the evening and the year.

Several members, as usual, led out the meeting in prayer in a corner of the room.

“The Wall” is gone

For anyone hoping to see the wall from the Bull-Moose Party’s notorious demonstration on Old Main lawn again — whether in another demonstration or in a museum one day — prepare to be disappointed.

Inside the Train has learned that the wall was picked up by local waste management services early last week.

A representative with the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority said that waste picked up in State College gets immediately added to a large truck with waste from several different locations and is sent to a massive landfill nearly 69 miles northwest of Penn State in Kersey, PA.

The wall was kept inside the building formerly occupied by the GOP Victory office on 232 South Burrowes St., which closed over the weekend, and was thrown out unbeknownst to leadership within the Bull-Moose Party. Members took the wall there for safe keeping after the hours-long demonstration on November 1, but was thrown out by an office employee shortly before election day.

Bull-Moose Party leadership are said to be upset at the wall’s disposal, which was the group’s most popular event of the campaign season. Several club members and members of the student body signed the wall with markers and chalk. It was eventually dubbed, “the free speech wall.” Members hoped to make an annual wall demonstration, or at the very least, break off pieces of the wall and share it amongst themselves.

Now, it seems, they will need to build a new wall to do so.

Trump supporters outnumbered in #NotMyPresident protest

Around 700 students marched to Old Main on Tuesday afternoon to protest the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, with little resistance to show for it.

Students from the Penn State Queer and Trans People of Color group spoke, without microphones, to the crowd, which stayed pin drop quiet to allow the organizer’s voices to be heard. During the protest, there were Trump supporters, but many didn’t wear their hats in resistance, and only one held a sign mocking the protest.

The event was fairly brief at Old Main. After remarks by about five students, students marched together to the HUB-Robeson Center, where they took over the new section of the HUB.

As Inside the Train reported yesterday, the Bull-Moose Party decided not to formally counter protest the event.

Bull-Moose Party won’t protest #NotMyPresident Walk-Out

After flirting with the idea of a counter-protest to Tuesday’s 12:30 p.m. “Not My President” walk-out at Old Main lawn, the Bull-Moose Party will not show up in an official manner at the event.

Bull-Moose Party Communications Director Chris Baker told the Daily Collegian that the group never “sanctioned” the event, but the matter was never discussed before, since their last meeting took place before the walk-out was announced. Several hundred people are expected to participate in the demonstration.

The group decided against going to the protest during its executive meeting Monday night. Chairman Robert Morss expressed issues with the “Love Trumps Hat” event, which was posted and promoted on Facebook by a member of the group. “Remember, we don’t have have a wall this time,” Morss told members.

“There’s nothing to gain from this,” one member remarked. “Even if there’s 20 of us with our hats on it’s going to pale in comparison [to the anti-Trump crowd].” Most members of the group echoed similar sentiments, as well as mentioning that the group has no need to counter the event because the campaign is over and their candidate won.

Member Kylie Thomas urged fellow members that, “If you do show up with your red hat, please take someone with you or stay in a group.”

“At this point, we’re literally just poking a bear for no reason,” said Vincent Cucchiara. “So my vote is not to go.”

“We have the wall, we have the debate, we have the election,” said Morss. “We’ve had our time to shine in the limelight.”

Morss then followed with his decision. “I don’t think it’s good on our character as a group, so my vote as chairman, I’m going to say no,” Morss said, ending the group’s participation in the event.

At one point, a member of the group said, “When they go low, we go high,” to which another member quickly responded, “No, we’re not the Hillary campaign!”

The group will hold its general meeting Wednesday in the Willard Building.