This town was on fire.

By 1 in the afternoon on Tuesday, every main thoroughfare downtown was filled with happy people heading toward the Covelli Centre. Folks dressed in red, white and blue crisscrossed the main grids as vendors sold “Make America Great Again” ball caps, American flags and bottles of water.

Thousands had filled the gravel parking lot to wait until the doors opened at 4, license plates revealing they had traveled from as far as Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia to see the president speak directly to them in this Rust Belt city.

Music played on almost every corner as Donald Skowron, a retired Youngstown police officer, drove his green pickup truck up and down Champion Street — in the back, a 6-by-8-foot homemade wooden Trump-Pence sign straddling the bed of the truck, with two large Trump flags flowing from the top.

“I am very happy with the president’s performance so far,” said Skowron. “He has set the exact tone I was looking for, although I’ll be honest, I wish he didn’t tweet all of the time, but that is hardly anything to complain.”

Skowron said he is encouraged by reading about Trump’s constant meetings with industry leaders as well as union and trade members in trying to understand how to create jobs: “We have a president invested in trying to navigate between the people who create jobs and the men and women doing the jobs and how repealing regulations help both.”

Read the full piece HERE.