16 places that shaped the 2016 election: Laredo, Texas

By Nov. 9, the votes will have been cast and counted, there will be a winner and a loser, and the country will begin a slow return to normal. Historians will have their say on the outcome, but all of us who have lived through this election will carry away indelible memories of a shocking year in American history: of a handful of ordinary people, swept up in the rush of history; of a series of moments on which the fate of the nation seemed, at least briefly, to turn; and of places on the map that became symbols of a divided nation. As we count down to Election Day, Yahoo News has identified 16 unforgettable people, moments and places.

It had been just a little more than a month since he had begun his presidential campaign with a dire warning that Mexico was shipping its “rapists” and “murderers” to the U.S. — and Donald Trump wanted to see things for himself. The Laredo, Texas, local representing Border Patrol agents had invited him, then changed its mind — under pressure from “Washington,” Trump hinted darkly — but he flew down anyway for a meeting with city officials. He did it because “I love this country,” despite “the great danger” the trip posed, apparently having been convinced by his own rhetoric that the place was overrun by gangsters shooting it out in broad daylight. (The murder rate in Laredo, according to FBI figures, is less than half that of Houston.)

He got in and out in one piece — the whole visit lasted all of three hours — and also with his worldview intact, despite efforts by Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz to educate the candidate to the realities of the border. At a brief press conference, Trump stood stiffly behind Saenz as the mayor praised NAFTA and boasted about the enormous international trade passing through his city. Then Trump took the microphone and basically told the mayor what he could do with his trade: “A lot of what is happening here is because Mexico is doing so well … and I don’t know if that’s good for the United States, but it’s good for Mexico.” He repeated his call for a wall along the border — although, perhaps in deference to his hosts, he used a qualification not often heard before or since: “in certain sections you have to have to have a wall” (italics added). And pressed by reporters to back up his claim that Mexico was sending criminals across the border, Trump cited his favorite source: “a lot of different people.”

The visit was memorable for two things. It was the moment that the Make America Great Again cap made its debut, on Trump’s own head. And his ability to attract two busloads of reporters to this remote location for a three-hour visit and a 15-minute press conference was an early indicator of how he would dominate the coverage of the campaign. “You want to ignore Donald Trump,” Molly Ball wrote in a prescient piece in the Atlantic. “You think maybe if you ignore him long enough, he will go away. Well, guess what? He’s not going away.” — By Jerry Adler

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