Wellington, Ohio — It’s a common trope in literature, and probably to some extent a feature of our own lives, that journeys end where they began, either literally or metaphorically. So it’s tempting to see former president Donald Trump’s return to northeastern Ohio this past Saturday for his first campaign-style rally since leaving office as a kind of bookend to the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. There, just short of five years ago, Trump formally secured his status as the standard-bearer for the Republican Party. It certainly has been a journey since then.
But this literary lens would skew the situation. Not just because the small town of Wellington, home to the Lorain County fairgrounds, which hosted this rally, is 45 minutes southwest of Cleveland, and quite different from the Lake Erie metropolis. More important, whatever these two Trump visits to Ohio bookend, what I understood as an attendee of this rally is that he has no intention of ending his political journey anytime soon. And his myriad supporters will remain by his side, self-affirming conspiracy theories and all.
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