These Are the Zealots Who Feed Trump’s Delusion
Blake “Brick Suit” Marnell has driven 10,000 miles this month to attend the midterm rallies—where Trump’s plummeting poll numbers are just more fake news.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Call it a selfie for our time: a reflection in ballistic glass of a man wearing a brick-patterned suit standing before a podium bearing the seal of the president of the United States.
Courtesy of Brick Suit
“‘Lectern reflection in bricks.’ Hang it in the National Gallery,” reads the X post by Brick Suit, as 62-year-old Blake Marnell of San Diego prefers to be called.
Marnell told Fox News that he will only wear the suit when Trump or JD Vance are speaking in person.
KENT NISHIMURA/AFP via Getty Images
Brick Suit is once again in the front row to hear the president speak as he takes the photo on Oct. 21 in Clemson, South Carolina, wearing one of the four masonry-themed outfits he bought online and rotates as he drives from Trump rally to Trump rally to Trump rally.
“I just logged 10,000 miles in October,” Brick Suit told the Daily Beast. “I’m gonna do another 2,100 miles driving by the 28th.”
Trump previously said Marnell had probably been to “800 rallies” and that his orange suit is “the most beautiful outfit I’ve ever seen.”
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
When President Trump stepped up to speak in Clemson, Brick Suit and the other Front Row Joes were once again directly in front of their dearest leader. They gazed upon him as if his plummet in the polls were just another case of fake news, as if he really was anointed by the Almighty to usher us into a Golden Era like nobody has ever seen before.
Their intoxicating devotion reinforces Trump’s self-delusion and shields him from the sobering reality of high prices and record-low approval ratings that truly are like nobody has ever seen before.
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Last month, news reports said that two Front Row Joes had become disillusioned with Trump’s policies and had stopped attending his events. Brick Suit dismissed the defections as old fake news, saying he is unsure if one of them ever was a Front Row Joe.
“I have not seen them at all in probably two years,” Brick Suit said.
One of the Front Row Joes who has since deserted Trump has labeled the president a “fraud and a liar.”
BLAKE FAGAN/AFP via Getty Images
But any vacant spots have continued to be filled by superfans literally at the forefront of Trump’s rally faithful, even as ever more of his less fervent supporters desert him in the polls. Brick Suit and his rowmates remain an iconic presence that continues to delight Trump, even though, while noting their presence at the Clemson rally, he mixed up their long-standing MAGA moniker.
“Front Row Jacks,” Trump said while pointing them out from the podium.
Trump quickly corrected himself as if he had made no error at all, and Brick Suit later said he had not heard the mistake.
“There’s a Front Row Joe,” Trump said. “There’s a Front Row Jack. We got all the front row.”
Brick Suit definitely heard what Trump proceeded to say.
“And we have Mr. Wall,” Trump told the crowd. “I love Mr. Wall. He’s a very, very successful guy. I saw him interviewed. He’s a very smart guy, but he loves wearing that wall suit. And someday, I tell people, I’m going to wear that suit.”
Brick Suit had retired from retail sales and was still just Blake Marnell in 2018, when he drove from his home in San Diego, California, to the convention center in Las Vegas for his first Trump rally.
“I’m a total Trump fan, and even though I hadn’t voted for him in 2016, because I wasn’t registered to vote, I was not, you know, not a voter at that time,” he told the Daily Beast. “I wasn’t taking part in politics, but when President Trump got into office and started following through on the things he said he was gonna do, like canceling the Trans-Pacific partnership and the Paris Climate Accord, I started paying attention.”
The neophyte disciple arrived four hours before the scheduled start, but saw that was not early for Trump fans.
“I’m just, like, way back in the line, just way back,” he recalled. “I talked to some people, I said, ‘Well, like, what time did you have to get here to get these seats?’”
He made sure to be extra, extra early for his second rally, in Mesa, Arizona.
“The original Front Row Joes were there, so I met them,” he remembered. “I met the people who had been doing it through the 2016 season, and we all got up on the front row, and just had a great time.”
He bought his first MAGA hat, but it did not cause as much of a stir back home in liberal San Diego as he had hoped. He decided on something with particular meaning amid persistent contention about the border and immigration.
“I needed something more significant to trigger the leftists,” he said. “That’s when I got a wall suit online. It’s a costume suit.”
Marnell held a sign reading “Build Me” to match his distinctive outfit when Trump invited him on stage in 2019.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Trump announced a rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, in May 2019. Brick Suit had planned a trip with his father not far from there and decided to attend.
“I’m all ready to go back east with my wall suit,” he recalled. “I’ve got it packed in my suitcase.”
He arrived at the venue in the early morning darkness.
“I got there about midnight, the night before,” he recalled. “I was third in line. I wore the suit for the first time. And the president called me up on stage. He’s like, ‘Look at that guy! Look at that guy! Get him up here!’ So I’m hopping the fence, the little bike barrier they hang flags on. It’s like an out-of-body moment for me. I’m thinking, ‘Don’t trip and don’t step on the flag.’ And then the next thing I can remember is coming off the stage, and my memory of that moment really is totally from watching it on YouTube.”
He realized he had placed a hand on Trump’s shoulder only after seeing it online. Trump had responded in kind.
“My first experience meeting President Trump was kind of like you’re greeting a relative, an old friend that you know really well,” he told the Daily Beast. “Not a hug, but just like the way guys greet guys.”
He was on his way to assuming a new identity.
“When the president of the United States calls you up at stage and you’re wearing a brick suit, you’ve got a choice: You can lock it up in the closet and never wear it again, say, ‘isn’t it cool?’ That one time. Or you can lean into it, and that’s how I became Brick Suit.”
He proceeded from rally to rally and was in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. He witnessed the assassination attempt from the front row.
“I was so close that I could see that the blood was only coming from the top of his ear,” he remembered.
Two days later, Brick Suit was a delegate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“I’m on the floor of the convention. And I get word that the president is arriving, and I just ditch the rest of my delegation, and I get out of my seat, and I’m trying to use my rally skills to get up to the front.
“Most of the people who were delegates there are just kind of like political people. They’re not really people who go to rallies. I’m like, ‘Excuse me, pardon me,’ kind of like just sliding sideways between people.”
He continued: “I get close to the president, and I get below where he’s speaking. And then on his way out, he sees me there, and he comes over, and the Secret Service has already said, ‘Don’t reach across the line. Don’t try and shake his hand. He’s not gonna stop. He’s just gonna be walking by.’
“But the president comes over and shakes my hand, a two-handed handshake. And he says to me, ‘That was a hell of a day, wasn’t it? Oh, God.’ And I said, ‘Yes, it was, sir.’”
Marnell showed supporters a Trump-signed MAGA hat at the 2024 Republican National Convention, where he was a delegate.
Courtesy of Brick Suit.
Brick Suit’s four outfits hung in his closet as Trump began his second term. The supposed peace president then launched a war of choice against Iran. His approval ratings, as well as those for the Republicans, were going down, down, down when he announced a series of mid-term rallies. He clearly imagined that he, and only he, could save MAGA.
Brick Suit set out to resume cosplaying the character he had created, trading his MAGA hat for a red hat reading VOTE.
“I left San Diego on the 28th [of September] and drove to Oklahoma. I drove from there overnight to Mobile [Alabama], then Mobile overnight to Vandalia, Ohio, then a two-day drive to Grand Island, Nebraska, then a two-day drive to San Antonio, Texas …” he told the Daily Beast.
An Oct. 13 rally in Alaska had been simply too far away, and he had missed one in Kansas.
“I had to have a dry cleaning day,” he explained.
With Halloween approaching, the brick suits had drawn no comment in the cleaners.
“People think it’s a costume,” he reported.
He nearly missed getting back to the cleaners before closing time, and posted a dramatic account of his dash.
“Showing a 5:53 arrival time which gives me 7 minutes to spare before the cleaners close…I’m 62 miles away though so anything can happen,” he wrote on X.
He made it and posted a photo of the suits in his car.
“Victory!”
Marnell will have driven his suits more than 12,000 miles before the month is out.
Courtesy of Brick Suit
After the Oct. 23 rally in Fort Myers, he drove 469 miles to Perry, Georgia, on Saturday. He posted a video of himself outside the venue in everyday attire.
“Not in the suit yet because BBQ and bricks don’t mix,” he wrote.
One of his 370,000 followers on X inquired, “Do you get recognized as bricksuit (sic) at these places you visit when your (sic) not wearing your superhero outfit?”
Brick replied, “Occasionally, yes.”
Even Brick Suit could not make it to the Oct. 25 rally in Port Huron, Michigan, thereby missing Trump proclaiming that Nicki Minaj has “one hell of a beautiful a--.”
“It’s too far for me to drive,” he reported. “It was a 14-hour drive, and I’d have to make it 15 hours. So I’d have to go for like a 30, you know, a 40-hour period without sleep. Not doable.”
Marnell was forced to miss Nicki Minaj telling supporters in Port Huron that “we love Trump.”
Alex Wong/Getty Images
But he was determined to be front and center at every subsequent rally he could.
“Corinth, Mississippi, to Chillicothe, Ohio, which I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing right,” he told the Daily Beast. “And from there to Daytona Beach, from Daytona Beach (Florida) to Dubuque, Iowa, on the 1st. And then possibly to D.C. for Election Day. And that’s what it’s looking like now.”
Every fuel pump along the way offers a reminder of how high gas prices have risen, but Brick Suit dismisses that as just a temporary “blip.” He attributes rising costs in general—which would include an average 7 percent rise for dry cleaning—to an issue alluded to by his now-trademark border-wall attire.
“Many of the issues that people are complaining about, in my estimation, are all downstream from illegal immigration,” Brick Suit said. “If you’re concerned about the cost of housing, think about what housing would be like with 20 million fewer people who shouldn’t be in America.”
He continued: “If you’re concerned about inflation in grocery prices, think about what it would be like with 20 million fewer consumers. The same thing goes for gasoline. The same thing goes for just a lot of issues.”
Such reasoning facilitates the echo chamber that fosters Trump’s progression from spin into the fantasy of a Golden Age in America.
“I personally don’t see any reduction in support for President Trump,” Brick Suit said. “I understand that there are people out there who are being vocal about this and that. But I don’t pay too much attention to them because I don’t necessarily think that that’s an overarching trend.”
Trump is clearly counting on many, many more people than the Front Row Joes who believe the nonsense he spouted from the podium whose wooden base held Brick Suit’s reflection. The presidential seal just above Mr. Wall’s phantasm could otherwise lose much of its power for at least the next two years.
And the prospect of that could make Trump desperate, and therefore even more dangerous.
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