DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea is in the studio with me, and he was just listening to Michael Signer there. And Don, what do you make of what you just heard? You cover a lot of Trump events.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: It's interesting where he talked about how flattery is an important tool. Donald Trump flatters his audience. He flatters his audience at every single event. Now when he's talking about his opponents, the other candidates, he'll call them losers. He'll call them stupid. He does go places that candidates don't usually go. But then he will say, the smartest people I've met on this campaign are the voters.
GREENE: You know, Michael Signer there offered his own perspective on Trump voters, one opinion. I mean, you speak to so many Trump voters at these events. What sort of things do they tell you?
GONYEA: They come to these rallies for a lot of different reasons, right? A small Donald Trump event has thousands of people. A big one has many thousands of people. And to be sure, there are people who are there who are just there for the celebrity, or they want to check it out. It's a scene. It's the big political happening of 2015-2016. So they're there. There are people who are there who are angry. They're angry the system is not working for them. They feel America is changing in ways that they just don't like. They're having a hard time keeping up economically. But you also get a lot of people who will explain to you that they see Donald Trump as perhaps the ultimate American success story. He has been successful at everything he has tried, at real estate, at business, in creating his television reality shows. They give him huge points for that. And they truly see that continuing if he is elected president. They think he is a guy, not a guy attached to any particular ideology. They see a guy who fixes things, and they're happy to support him, especially when compared to the rest of the field.
GREENE: Don, thanks a lot.
GONYEA: Pleasure.
GREENE: That's NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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