When Mark Willacy attended a Trump rally in New Jersey in May, he witnessed ‘cult-like’ fervor from Republicans.
There was merchandise that was alarming, negative reception to media and wild claims from the candidate himself.
Until this week there was no major violence, but that all changed at an event in Pittsburgh, which producers will now hurriedly incorporate into the storytelling for tonight’s Four Corners episode.
“When you go to a Trump rally, the one thing that blew my mind was just the antipathy, the hatred and the bile towards Joe Biden. This isn’t a sensible debate about the economy here. It’s basically a ‘cult-like’ atmosphere where, if you’re not for Donald Trump, then you are the mortal enemy. Some of the merchandise there about Joe Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, which will feature in Episode Two, blew my mind actually. I’ve seen a lot of footage of Trump rallies, but to get into the heart of one, was quite the experience,” he tells TV Tonight.
Willacy managed to quell any hostility directed at him as media with a little charm from down under.
“They’d say, ‘Are you CNN?’ And very purposely go, ‘No, mate, we’re from Australia.’ As soon as I did that, people generally did a 180 and they were welcoming, friendly, because we were the Australian media. They seem to have some sort of affinity with Australia. But having said that, there were some pretty dark moments there for the US press that day.
“We had another guy come up filming me, saying ‘What do you think of Joe Biden?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, mate. Don’t know the guy.’ And he just immediately laughed, because he knew I was Australian, and it broke the ice.
“We were there for eight hours,” Willacy recalled.
“Trump arrives around 5 maybe 6pm and he gets up on stage. One of the first things is the media. They’re ‘fake news, immigrants that are poisoning the blood of the country’. You know, all of these messages tha he promotes every time. And of course, the media is central to that dichotomy he wants to present… that they’re part of this deep state, trying to sort of take away your livelihoods and your rights. It’s quite an unnerving atmosphere.”
Four Corners screens two episodes of “Retribution” ahead of the US election.
He sits down with White House insiders who witnessed the chaos of Trump’s first term — some who continue to support his vision, and others Trump now considers “traitors”.
“We went over April and we spent just under six weeks crisscrossing the country, doing interviews and heading down to the Mexican border, over California, Georgia, we spent a fair bit of time in Washington, up to New York, over to a Trump rally in New Jersey. We didn’t stay still for long. We tried to see as much as we could and to see as many people as we could,” he continues.
“For Episode One we look at the implications for the United States, the world, US institutions and democracy over the return of Trump. Episode two is looking at both sides: what are the issues? Where both men stand on issues like immigration, abortion, the economy. It’s also going to battleground states such as Arizona in Georgia, talking to the black community about Biden and Trump. Then the same in Arizona, with the Latino community.”
ABC spoke to a range of insiders, both former and current, on what a second Trump term could look like for America, democracy and global affairs.
“We spoke to his Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, who was a integral member of his team, and he’s still a very close ally of Trump,” says Willacy.
“On the flip side we had John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, who Trump ended up accusing, basically, of treason. So he was sort of put in the naughty corner. We had some interesting staffers around Trump, people like Miles Taylor, who told us an amazing story when he was in the Department of Homeland Security about how Trump wanted to build a moat all along the Mexican border and put alligators and snakes in it. Crazy stuff.
“On the other side, we had really thoughtful, people like Leon Panetta, who was, of course Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff. He was the director of the CIA, and then he was Barack Obama’s defense secretary. So we had some really interesting people from Trump’s side, but also people who were warning about what a second Trump presidency means.”
Willacy goes inside “Project 2025”, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump term and speaks with Paul Dans, Director, 2025 Presidential Transition Project in his first Australian television interview.
“Trump has tried in the last week to distance himself from Project 2025 because the Democrats are making inroads on it, saying it’s sort of this authoritarian plan,” he explains.
“Dans basically has told us that he’s got integration with the Trump campaign. So Trump may be telling a few fibs on that front about Project 2025. I think that that might make a bit of news in the US that there is a link between Trump and this project, and we’ve got that on tape.
“But I think it’s more about the personal assessments of Trump. We’ve got people like Anthony Scaramucci, who was, of course, his White House Communications Director, very briefly, telling some very interesting anecdotes about what Trump was like to work with, and just how he spins the message. It’s more just, I think, the amazing insights into Trump, the politician, the media construct and the man.”
Since filming there have also been gaffes in the Biden campaign with many openly calling for the Democrat nominee to step down over his cognitive ability.
“We did very much go into the issue of Biden’s gaffes, his mental acuity -as well as Trump’s for that matter- with a range of people,” he adds.
“We do have some amazing insights from people including Democrats, I have to say, who’ve worked with Biden, one person in particular for a couple of decades, who gives us a great insight and admits Biden is a ‘gaffe machine.’ So we do explore that. We do have people in our interviews discussing it.
“We will address the great Presidential Debate fade out because it’s something that’s shaped the campaign.”
Four Corners: Retribution Part I screens 8:30pm Monday on ABC.
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