The Trump campaign’s choice of venue was notable. They opted for the smaller of the two options inside the city’s Cherokee Center, with a capacity of less than 2,500 rather than over 7,000. In the days leading up to the event, this choice was seen as a sign of weakness, an admission that the ex-president’s slimmed-down schedule was the result of diminished enthusiasm amid a surge in the polls for his new rival, Kamala Harris.

Asheville was also a curious choice because of its reputation as a liberal city; as we queued six or so blocks away from the Cherokee Center, Harris-Walz protestors marched past holding banners. A retired military Humvee emblazoned with Harris-Walz (and later brandishing a ‘Trump Lost’ flag) kept circling the blocks where Asheville locals and Trump supporters from further afield were patiently queuing in 28°C heat.

Admittedly, the counter-protestors were few and far between—far fewer than the locals whom we met in the queue had anticipated—and those walking past brandishing ‘Harris-Walz’ and ‘Free Palestine’ placards were laughed and hissed at by the crowds, sometimes in a good-natured way and sometimes in ways that felt more sinister.

We arrived around noon—four hours before Trump was due to speak—and queued for almost four hours. Despite the misgivings some political observers have about the composition of Trump’s base, the queue for the event was incredibly diverse.

The most remarkable person we met was a young man in his late twenties called Deegan. Sharp and thoughtful, he worked as an electrician and had served in the Marine Corps. His first-hand experience of the military-industrial complex and the procurement processes of the US military—“We’d have to buy a hammer from a contractor for $50 when we could buy it at Home Depot for $12”—somehow led to him advocating a relatively isolationist foreign policy.

The cost and size of the American military, rather than acting as a source of pride, were for him a millstone around the neck of the country, one that meant that the US’s commitment to global stability was prohibitively expensive.

Despite his Marine Corps experience, he was remarkably circumspect about the limits of US power projection overseas and the realities of machtpolitik. When asked about support for NATO and Ukraine, he said that NATO had been too nakedly a tool of US foreign policy interests, and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the inevitable consequence of poking the Russian bear.

Although his politics were distinctly those of the MAGA movement, he was obviously well read in history (quoting Lord Palmerston that states have no permanent allies, only permanent interests), economics (he critiqued the libertarian reduction of social life to economics), and political theory (discussing Nietzsche and what the death of God meant for the loss of meaning in Western societies).

We also got a good sense of some people’s less-mainstream beliefs and their perspectives on traditional media. We overheard several Trump supporters in the queue asking each other which Telegram groups they had joined. Telegram is a Russian messaging app ostensibly built around free speech that has become a hub of Russian propaganda.

Many of the attendees we spoke to said they got their news from ex-Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson (who made a trip to Russia earlier this year, where he doted on the Putin regime), far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (who has been ordered to pay $1.1bn to the families of children murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting), and Tim Pool (a right-wing political commentator and podcast host who has been linked with Russian-controlled foreign media).

We also heard supporters agreeing that the 2020 election had been stolen and that businessman George Soros was responsible.

However friendly and affable many of the attendees were, their beliefs were a sobering reminder of the intense partisanship in US politics and the deeply conspiratorial mindset of many Trump supporters, which may lead to a straightforward rejection of the election result in November if Harris prevails.

After nearly four hours in the baking-hot sun, we arrived at the front of the queue. But as we neared the Secret Service screening point, people began to turn round and head back to the centre of town. The auditorium had reached capacity and was operating on a one in, one out basis, we were told. There must have been at least 1,000 people, including us, who had left by the time Trump’s remarks on the economy began at 4pm.

There are two ways of looking at this. One is the ‘favourable’ view: that the Trump campaign radically underestimated the ex-president’s support in small-town liberal America and that the depth of feeling for Trump is much stronger than the polls and the mainstream media portray.

The more cynical view is that the campaign chose a small auditorium to give the appearance of dramatically underestimated support for Trump in a swing state that he won by just 1.34% in 2020.

Trump’s remarks, heard by the nearly 2,500 people who managed to get inside the auditorium, had precious little to do with the economy. He began by praising the state’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, who has come under fire for his Holocaust denial and desire to remove the franchise from women, among other controversial comments.

While the posters behind him were intended to focus attention on policies to remove taxes on service workers’ tips and pensioners’ social security income, the ex-president quickly veered off message. He was quick to criticise Vice President Harris’s record—referring to the Biden administration as the “Harris-Biden Administration”—and focusing fire on, of all things, Harris’ laugh, arguing that it was the “laugh of a crazy person.”

The much-sought-after message discipline that erstwhile Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy has urged Trump to adopt, and to focus on the substantive issues, quickly fell away in favour of Trump’s preferred style of grievance articulation and personality politics.

What my time in Asheville showed was that enthusiasm for Donald Trump appears strong—but appearances can deceive. And perspective is a powerful thing. Seen in the context of the race in the southeastern US, Asheville is a drop in the bucket that ultimately tells us little about how Trump is likely to perform in the key swing states in November.

At the same time, however, Trump’s lack of substance and reversion to Biden-bashing means that he is unlikely to woo over the kind of Rust Belt Democrats who were so central to his victory in 2016.

There are less than six weeks to go, and as British prime minister Harold Wilson once put it, a week is a long time in politics. Presidential elections are famous for their ‘October surprises,’ so events might yet come along that change the race once again.