I talked to Tom, the viral ‘Jonestown’ Trump rally guy

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Tom Hoyle knew he had a chiropractor appointment on Thursday, and when he remembered the office was halfway between his home in Charlotte, North Carolina and Trump’s rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, he figured he might as well attend. He planned to make some good trouble at the event, but he never expected a Fox News reporter would hand him a microphone.

A clip of Hoyle, 57, went viral on Thursday. In it, the reporter asks him “Why are you here this morning?” Hoyle, with a bushy beard and wearing a baseball cap and a shirt with the logo for the band Death, replied “Well, in the late ‘70s, I was a little too young to get involved and go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get, so that's why I'm here.” Confused, the reporter says “Wait, the Jonestown Massacre?” Hoyle fires back, “That’s right. There's nothing like seeing a cult right up front.”

Hoyle says he was first alerted to the event on Monday when his business phone received a call from the organizers asking him and his business partner to attend. (He co-owns MadPark Designs, a custom printing company in Charlotte, with Brian Cetina.) Motivated by a desire to express his hatred for Trump, Hoyle said “here's my opportunity. Let's go do something goofy.”

I spoke to Hoyle by phone Thursday evening about his 25 seconds of fame, being a “daywalker,” the meaning behind his shirt, and how he learned comedic timing from Billy Crystal. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

MARISA KABAS, THE HANDBASKET: So let's start at the beginning. How did you end up going to the Trump rally in Rock Hill?

TOM HOYLE, MADPARK DESIGNS: Well,  they broke the cardinal rule with MadPark Designs. They solicited us through our phone, and we despise that. Whether it's a bank or a company or a politician, we despise that. So we always look at ways we can turn the tables and make their day a little less smooth.

KABAS: Who solicited you?

HOYLE: Whoever was organizing the Trump rally. They said, “Hey, Donald Trump's coming to Rock Hill. Would you like to attend this event?” And that came to our business phone and I didn't like that. So I immediately responded with, “Yes, I would like to attend.”

So I registered with my actual name, my actual phone number, my actual email address. I didn't want there to be any doubt that they invited me and I told them who I was. So that's what I did. And when they responded yesterday afternoon and said, “hey, here's where we're having it,” I said, okay, well, I'm going.

KABAS: So the inciting event was them calling to solicit you to come.

HOYLE: Yeah, I would probably have done it anyway, but that bothered me even more. As much as I despise Donald Trump and his ilk and MAGA and all of that—I despise them. I hate them with every bit of my DNA. That pushed me over the edge and I said, here's my opportunity. Let's go do something goofy.

KABAS: So part of you had kind of been waiting for an opportunity like that.

HOYLE: Yeah, because I've taken advantage of those opportunities so many times in my life, including last year when I went out to confront, by myself, Border Patrol one day, and then the very next day ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. I don't care for what they do, and I need to let them know.

KABAS: And where did that happen?

HOYLE: That happened here in Charlotte last year during the surge with Border Patrol and ICE. It was totally dangerous, uncalled for, unprofessional, wasteful. And so they just happened to get in my way on a Saturday and Sunday morning, and so I, you know, voiced my displeasure in my own personal, vitriolic way. 

KABAS: So this is just your nature.

HOYLE: It is very much. I'm 57 and a half years old, and I grew up two miles from our office. And people will tell you I've always been a loud mouth, and I'm such an anti-bully. I become a bully with bullies. So maybe Gandhi wouldn't approve, but, you know, maybe Malcolm X would.

KABAS: Are you affiliated with any political party? 

HOYLE: I was a registered Republican for decades, but my father always told us we should never pull party ticket. We should vote for every qualified Democrat or Independent that we could. We always voted for people of different parties, but just about a year and a half ago, I re-registered as an Independent. I don't want the stain of what used to be the Republican Party on me anymore. There is no Republican Party. It's just MAGA, and they're dead.

KABAS: Did you ever vote for Trump?

HOYLE: No, I have hated Donald Trump since 1989, as a young man, sophomore in college. What he did with the Central Park Five [now called the Exonerated Five.] I already knew I didn't like him because of watching him on David Letterman, who I was a huge fan of growing up. I already knew I didn't like him, but when the Central Park Five stuff happened, I decided then, “you're dead to me,” and hopefully to everybody else.

KABAS: Going into the event today, did you know what you were going to say if you got the chance ahead of time, or was that off the cuff?

HOYLE: No, that was off the cuff. My original plan that I worked on with a friend of mine, who was also a loud mouth when we were kids, was to go in there, wait for Trump to speak, maybe three or four minutes in, yell out something super vulgar that I won't repeat. But then the gentleman from Fox News walked up to me when I was in there, for some bizarre reason. I was standing there by myself away from everybody, and he asked if he could interview me, and I said, absolutely, I want you to interview me right now. And then he said, let me get set up. And I said well, I'm not going to be vulgar on TV. I'm just not going to do it. It's not the place. I just said, I'll just say something about it being a cult, and then the rest of it just flowed.

KABAS: Is Jonestown a comparison you've thought about before?

HOYLE: Absolutely. I knew about Jonestown somewhat, just like I told that story, in the late 70s. I was about 10-years-old. But I've always told people, you know, it wasn't even Kool-Aid [that Jim Jones laced with cyanide and forced his followers to drink.] It was the cheap Flavor Aid or Wyler's or something like that, and it's very microcosmic of this whole thing with Trump. He's got a cult and he's a cheapskate and he's a crook. So I've seen memes before like, the difference between Jim Jones and Trump is that Trump would charge you for the Kool-Aid before you died.

But yeah, I've thought about that quite a bit at how cults are crazy, and that's what MAGA is—a cult. My dad used to say, “These people don't believe shit stinks,” and this is what it is. “You can take a whiz down their neck and they say, No, I don't know what you're talking about. That's rain.”

KABAS: So what do you think made that Fox News reporter want to talk to you?

HOYLE: I think because there's a certain stereotype of white guys with some sort of facial hair and a ball cap on, and I fell into that. They don't understand that I'm what you call a daywalker. I look like you, but I'm not like you. I'm the vampire during the day—come talk to me and watch yourself get bitten. They thought I looked like that, and other white people have done that over the decades. They'll think I'm one way and say something, and then I remind them where I grew up two miles from here in a mostly Black neighborhood. It doesn't matter where I grew up, but I've got a special, let's just say, perspective on things that makes me a little hypersensitive to it. 

KABAS: Did you stay for the rest of the event after that?

HOYLE: No, a few minutes later, the Secret Service came up and said they wanted to talk to me, and I said, about what? And they didn't identify themselves as Secret Service, and I'm the type of guy—I don't know who you are. Go away from me, dude. I got stuff to do here. So anyway, they said, can we talk to you for a minute? I said yeah, you're talking. Go right ahead. And the guy said, we want to talk over here. I said, well I don't want to go over there. And then the guy said, well, we do. I said, who's we? And they were all—you know, I'm not a small person. That video probably doesn't relay it, but I'm probably about 6’2”, 210 pounds. And I said, well, I don't want to go anywhere with you. Then the guy said he's with Secret Service, and I said, oh, is this about the concession stand? and he said, what'd you do at the concession stand? I said nothing, but it was closed super early and I'm starving. And uh, he didn't like that. And then they walked me out. 

And then the gentleman [at the front door] who tried to weed me out on the way in the door by asking me some questions—I talked him out of keeping me out of the event just by talking in circles about heavy metal and about my shirt—well, that guy was walking in as I was walking out after I was ejected, and I said, “Hey man, you didn't vet me too well,” and I kept walking. So they may not have him do their security in the future.

KABAS: What was he asking you?

HOYLE: He said, well, are you a Trump supporter? I said, I'm a supporter of the Constitution. I love this country. Where are you going with this line of questioning? Who are you? He didn't have a uniform. He was a private security guy, just a meathead. He goes, well, my job was to vet people with these things. I said, what about Death [the band]? What do you know about death metal? And that's when I just talked him in circles, and he said, oh, I don't really know about that group. And I gave him my schpiel on the roots of Florida death metal. I told him that Chuck Schuldiner, God rest his soul, was a god in the heavy metal world.

KABAS: Was wearing that shirt a deliberate choice?

HOYLE: Yes, it was, as a matter of fact, because that wonderful, wonderful woman that gave the double birds to Trump a week or two ago and was lunging at people and challenging them to come at her, and she had the gray hair, in the glasses, and I think she's a former school teacher—she had a Primus shirt on. Primus is one of the most talented, progressive metal and hard rock bands that ever existed on this Earth, and I thought, man, there's my spirit animal. And I thought about her and I said, I want somebody to see something that's going to be like, oh my god, there's more of us out there. And that's Death fans, because we're not as big as, like, Metallica fans or generic metal, but Death is the most hardcore of death metal ever. You see somebody in a Death shirt and you know they're a person that's interested in humanity, a love of animals, and the protection of this environment. Because that's what Chuck Schuldiner was all about.

KABAS: What does your family think about your viral moment?

HOYLE: One of my sisters called me giggling incessantly like a child and I haven't heard from the other one, and I don't bother my mom with this type of thing. She's 81 years old, so I'll probably call her later and talk to her about fantasy football or something. But my older sister thought it was quite hilarious and her entire office thought it was quite hilarious. And you know, I didn't do it for that, but the comedic value was off the charts, I must say.

KABAS: Everyone is really impressed by your timing, above all.

HOYLE: That's Billy Crystal. I learned timing from Billy Crystal. He, in an interview on David Letterman in the mid ‘80s, said listen, whether you wait 30 seconds after you start the joke and then wait for the follow-up or the question from the other person, or you wait two minutes or 30 minutes, you wait. You wait for the opportunity for the punchline. And this guy gave me the counter to my first statement, and then I gave him the punchline. So yeah, I learned timing from Billy Crystal.

KABAS: That's incredible. On a more serious note, do you fear any retribution from the clip?

HOYLE: No, we don't. We've done this before. We have promoted printing shirts for George Floyd protests in his name years ago. We print for the No Kings rallies. We print for We Rock Charlotte, which is an LGBTQ-driven free music organization that gives free lessons to single mothers and kids. We don't care if you want to come over here and try to intimidate us. We are two blocks from the police academy, and guess what? We print for them, too. So all we got to do is call them dudes down here. We do not fear some keyboard warrior that might come down here.