Lisa Brown, PhD

The guy who compared a Trump rally to Jonestown on live Fox News was invited by the Trump campaign. They called his work phone on Monday and asked him to come. His name is Tom Hoyle. He's 57 and runs a small custom printing shop in Charlotte called MadPark Designs with his business partner. He's hated Trump since 1989, back when he was a sophomore in college. And he really, really doesn't like getting sales calls on the shop line, from anybody. So when the rally people called, he said yes. He even signed up with his real name and contact info, because he wanted it on the record that they invited him. Then he had to get through the door. A private security guy asked him straight up if he was a Trump supporter. Tom told him he supports the Constitution, then started talking about his shirt, which was for an old death metal band called Death. He kept going about the history of Florida death metal until the guard gave up and let him in. His plan going in was honestly pretty juvenile. He and a buddy he grew up with figured he'd wait a few minutes into the speech and yell something filthy. Then a Fox News reporter, Lucas Tomlinson, found him standing off by himself and asked if he could interview him live. Tom thinks a white guy with a big beard and a ball cap was pretty much exactly what they were looking for. He told himself he wasn't going to cuss on national TV, so he made it up on the spot. He says the first line and then just waits. The reporter goes "Wait, the Jonestown Massacre?" and that's when he finishes it. He told The Handbasket he picked that up from Billy Crystal, who said on Letterman back in the '80s that you always let the other guy set up your punchline. Tomlinson set it up for him perfectly. A few minutes later some men who said they were Secret Service pulled him aside. He asked if this was about the concession stand, because it closed early and he was starving. They didn't love that and walked him out. On his way out he passed the guard from the front door and told him, hey man, you didn't vet me too well. Think about how many people had a shot at stopping this. The campaign's call list found him. The signup form had his name. A guard questioned him to his face. A Fox crew put him on live TV. Every one of them took one look at the beard and the hat and filled in the rest. That's how almost all of this screening works. Asking somebody what they actually believe takes time, and looking at them takes a second, so everybody just looks. The one check that actually caught him came after he'd already said it on national TV.