As the sun set behind the Bitterroot Mountains, over  8000 faces turned toward the sky to watch Air Force One land at the Missoula International Airport. Tension and excitement mounted as the jet taxied down the tarmac, toward the Minuteman Aviation Hangar west of the airport, where the attendees of a campaign rally for Donald Trump stood, phones held aloft.

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That afteroon, Oct. 18, rally attendees had waited in clogged roundabouts,  stood in the heat for hours working their way up a half-mile long line,  rode crowded yellow school buses to the hangar, and  waited in another line to go through security before they got into the hangar. Once there, they waited for the president for hours, sitting on the floor, leaning on the walls, talking, watching, and waiting for the President to come to Missoula for the first times since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954.