Inside the cavernous concrete film studio where a Spider-Man movie was filmed, the hometown hero got a superhero's welcome from what he said were 15,000 people inside and another 5,000 outside. The press vultures would later estimate the crowd at 8,000 to 10,000, but he had already warned the assembled to watch out for that trick. "I love you, I love you," the crowd shouted at him. The favorite son crooned back, sounding ever so slightly Sinatra: "I love you too. I looove these people."

Donald J. Trump and his entourage had rolled into Long Island and right up to the venue. The other 10,000 people at the event were herded on an extended and inexplicable perambulation around the entire structure--a length of football field on each side--after leaving their cars. They had walked in a biting wind to the venue, a former aerospace factory building and hangar turned movie studio on the edge of Bethpage, New York.

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