Will Bunch has worked at the Daily News for 20-plus years and is now senior writer. Since 2005, he’s written the uber-opinionated, fair-but-dangerously unbalanced opinion blog "Attytood," covering a range of topics (but mostly politics and the media these days); it’s been named best blog in the state by the Associated Press Managing Editors and best blog in the city by Philadelphia Magazine. He’s also authored three full-length books and three Amazon Kindle Single e-books, including 2015’s The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream. Prior to coming to Philadelphia, he worked at New York Newsday, where he was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. 
 
 Donald Trump motions in triumph to the crowd at the Giant Center in Hershey, Pa. "We made history together," he told the audience. 
 
 HERSHEY, Pa. – With the calendar reading December, even Donald Trump seemed surprised – well, almost surprised – by the packed house that came tonight to hear him yet again call out “the dishonest media,” to rip “stupid politicians” who “sold us up the river” on trade, and drop the occasional lie about “the highest murder rate in 45 years” (not even close) or the alleged 8,000 people waiting outside in sub-zero wind chill (huh?). 
 
 The man who becomes America’s 45th president in 36 days said he understood the “build the wall!” passion of the fall campaign but that “if somebody else – a normal person – came after the election you’d get maybe 15 people, because they’re tired of politics,” adding perhaps post-election his fans are “more laid back.” 
 
 “We still hate the media!” a voice bellowed from behind the press pit. 
 
 The election may have ended five-and-a-half weeks ago, but try telling that to the hundreds of folks who ringed Hershey’s Giant Arena some three hours before the rally started as polar winds cascaded across the open farmlands of central Pennsylvania, or to the sea of red “Make America Great Hats” bobbing on the concrete floor of the hockey rink, and certainly not to the future president who seems intent on reliving November 9, again and again. 
 
 Indeed, I’d come to Hershey to immerse myself in what seems to be America’s new normal, no matter how not normal it all still feels, and to seek an answer to a question: Is Donald Trump’s unorthodox “Thank You Tour” of victory rallies in the key battleground states like Pennsylvania just one more national monument to the towering narcissism of the 45th president-to-be? 
 
 Or is it something darker, a rite of slow passage toward a more authoritarian United States, with a preening strongman at the head? 
 
 Hershey seemed like a good place for Trump to say thank you. After all, it was the unexpected surge in rural counties and the ring of rust-eaten, abandoned-factory towns in central Pennsylvania that gave the Republican upstart his 44,000-vote upset victory in the Keystone State, knocking down the supposed solid blue wall that was going to put Hillary Clinton in the White House. The looping whimsy of the Hersheypark roller coasters outside the arena stand in contrast to the saga of hundreds of factory jobs slashed in this chocolate-making town since 2000, some of them moved south to Mexico. 
 
 Like America’s other problems, Trump told the crowd that the main solution to the jobs situation would be...Trump. “The era of economic surrendering is over,” the president-elect said to cheers. “You are now going to have a champion that fights for you in the White House because from now on it’s going to be America first!” 
 
 But few of the 7,000 or so folks who packed the arena appeared to have jobs and the economy on the top of their list. Instead, with Christmas just 10 days away, the rally was the political equivalent of Festivus – all about the airing of grievances and Trump boasting about his feats of strength. And aside from the occasional “Lock her up!” rants about Hillary, about 90 percent of his fans’ grievances are against the news media. 
 
 “CNN Sucks!” people milling around the hockey floor blurted out from time to time, as casually as one might hear “Happy Holid…”, excuse me, “Merry Christmas”…at the seasonal office party, while others scrawled that slogan across their Trump/Pence placards. “HE WON – GET OVER IT!” blared another sign, a photo of a bawling infant surrounded by the logos for CNN, MSNBC and some of the other news networks. 
 
 Near the stage, I had a pleasant conversation with 60-year-old Dave Delp, a social worker from nearby Harrisburg, a lifelong Republican who’d been turned away from two previous Trump rallies but got in to see Clinton a couple of times, to protest with his “Hillary for Prison” T-shirt. He said he was drawn to The Donald’s firm position on immigration, but the two hand-scrawled signs at his feet told a different story, “Don’t Believe the Liberal Media” and, of course, “CNN Sucks.” (This despite the hours of free infomercial-style airtime that CNN gave to Trump pep rallies like this one, but I digress…) 
 
 Drill deeper and the Trump partisans will insist that the media spent too much time twisting Trump’s words and giving Hillary – whose email problems received three times as much network airplay as all substantive issues combined – a free pass. That’s from ones who will talk to a reporter, anyway. 
 
 I had to leave one section of the arena after a 30ish man who wouldn’t give name but said he worked at a software company overheard that I wrote for the Daily News and then showed off his search-engine skills and pulled up, on his phone, our paper’s notorious 2015 cover about Trump’s proposed (and unconstitutional) Muslim ban, the one headlined “The New Furor.” 
 
 “Don’t talk to him – he thinks we all Nazis,” the man interrupted the interview. 
 
 “Uh, he’s right – I better not talk to you,” said the young Trump voter I’d been speaking with. I guess in Trump’s America, anyone’s just a Google search away from some kind of blacklist. For the record, I don’t think Trump voters are Nazis – well, except for the tiny handful who say that they are – but one can’t sit through the ritualistic pageantry of a Trump rally and wonder where he plans to take this thing. The venue may be a red, white and blue hockey rink in the American heartland, but the rallies, the braggadocio, the unfettered grievance against journalists, professors and other despised elites all carry ugly echoes of the worst that the 20th Century had to offer. 
 
 Just this week, a report by John Broich of Public Radio International recalled how U.S. journalists in the 1930s largely missed Europe’s turn toward authoritarianism until it was too late. He quoted one of them, Dorothy Thompson, who wrote that “(n)o people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” adding: “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” 
 
 Trump certainly fulfilled the last part of the bargain tonight. 
 
 He declared that the election results showed that “the American people still run our country” – even as Clinton’s lead in the popular vote tally extends to roughly 2.8 million votes and accusations swell that Russia’s Vladimir Putin worked to tilt the election toward Trump. “I will never forget you. I will never stop fighting for you and I never will let you down.” 
 
 There was no talk of building alliances or making friends in the new Congress or with other nations – other players aren’t even an afterthought in Trump’s brave new world. Besides, there was too much other stuff to talk about – the endless replay of the states that fell for Trump on November 8, and the various jibes at CNN and its reporters like Jon King, whose “hands were shaking,” the president-elect insisted, as he announced that Trump was ahead. 
 
 The crowd ate that up, but you can’t help but wonder when the future commander-in-chief will finally adapt the message on the sign that his fan brandished 100 feet from the stage. 
 
 You won. Get over it. ||||| FILE In this Oct. 20, 2016 file photo, Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont. speaks with a supporter in Billings, Mont., as he campaigns for re-election. Edging closer to completing his Cabinet, President-elect Donald... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE In this Oct. 20, 2016 file photo, Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont. speaks with a supporter in Billings, Mont., as he campaigns for re-election. Edging closer to completing his Cabinet, President-elect Donald Trump announced his choice of Zinke as Interior secretary Thursday, Dec. 15, 2016, picking a man... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE In this Oct. 20, 2016 file photo, Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont. speaks with a supporter in Billings, Mont., as he campaigns for re-election. Edging closer to completing his Cabinet, President-elect Donald Trump announced his choice of Zinke as Interior secretary Thursday, Dec. 15, 2016, picking a man... (Associated Press) FILE In this Oct. 20, 2016 file photo, Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont. speaks with a supporter in Billings, Mont., as he campaigns for re-election. Edging closer to completing his Cabinet, President-elect Donald... (Associated Press) 
 
 HERSHEY, Pa. (AP) — Donald Trump's barnstorming tour across the states that won him the White House continues to feature far more taunts of triumph than notes of healing after a bruising election. 
 
 Thursday's rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, found the president-elect calling for the mostly white crowd to cheer for African-Americans who were "smart" to heed his message and therefore "didn't come out to vote" for his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. 
 
 "That was the big thing, so thank you to the African-American community," Trump said. 
 
 He also edged closer Thursday to completing his Cabinet, announcing his choice for interior secretary: Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who should fit smoothly into an administration favoring more energy drilling and less regulation. 
 
 The president-elect — who also found time to hit Twitter, playing media critic and then stating anew his doubts about charges that Russia hackers tried to disrupt the U.S. election — boasted to the crowd in Pennsylvania that he captured a state that for many Republicans was "the bride that got away." 
 
 "Everyone leaves Pennsylvania, Republicans, thinking they won Pennsylvania. And they never do. They just don't win Pennsylvania," said Trump. 
 
 Pennsylvania had not gone for a Republican candidate since 1988. But the Trump campaign staff long thought that the state, rich in white working-class voters, would be receptive to his populist message and not be part of Clinton's hoped-for firewall. 
 
 Trump repeatedly campaigned there, drawing some of the largest and loudest crowds of the campaign. He won the state by less than 1 percentage point, giving him a vital 20 electoral college votes. 
 
 The evening rally in Hershey also featured a nearly 20-minute recap of Trump's election night win with the crowd cheering as the president-elect slowly ticked off his victories state by state, mixing in rambling criticisms of incorrect pundits and politicians from both sides of the aisle. 
 
 Trump earlier praised Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, as having "built one of the strongest track records on championing regulatory relief, forest management, responsible energy development and public land issues." Zinke, 55, was an early supporter of the president-elect and publicly expressed his interest in a Cabinet post when Trump visited Montana in May. 
 
 As with several other Cabinet selections, Zinke has advocated increased drilling and mining on public lands and has expressed skepticism about the urgency of climate change. House Speaker Paul Ryan praised the pick, saying Zinke "has been an ardent supporter of all-of-the-above energy policies and responsible land management." 
 
 But his nomination could have a ripple effect on control of the Senate, since Zinke now may forgo what was once a near-certain challenge to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2018. 
 
 The president-elect also tapped attorney Daniel Friedman, his adviser on Israeli affairs, to be U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Friedman, in a statement, said he would help fulfill Trump's promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Many Republican presidents have made a similar vow without success. 
 
 Trump also added to his national security team by announcing the appointments of retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as chief of staff of the National Security Council and Monica Crowley, a Fox News analyst, as the organization's director of communications. Kellogg spent more than 35 years in the Army and, in 2003, oversaw the efforts to form the new Iraqi military after it was disbanded. Crowley and Fox ended their relationship on Thursday. 
 
 Trump has two Cabinet selections yet to make though he also needs to fill out much of his White House staff. And he was busy on Twitter Thursday morning. 
 
 He again cast doubt on U.S. intelligence assertions about Russia election hacking, writing: "If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?" 
 
 That assertion is untrue. A month before the election, the Obama administration bluntly accused Russia of hacking American political sites and email accounts to interfere. 
 
 Trump has repeatedly said he'd like to improve ties with Russia, a hope that has been echoed in Moscow. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday lauded Trump's Cabinet selections, and particularly Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, as people with no "anti-Russian stereotypes." 
 
 The Kremlin has cheered Trump's victory although some Russian officials have recently said they are not expecting relations between Russia and the U.S., which were battered after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, to improve overnight. 
 
 Trump also tweeted, "The media tries so hard to make my move to the White House, as it pertains to my business, so complex - when actually it isn't!" His declaration came on the day he was supposed to hold a news conference, now postponed until January, to reveal how he plans to distance himself from his business. Aides said more time was needed to finalize the complicated arrangement. 
 
 ____ 
 
 AP Congressional Correspondent Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.. 
 
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 Reach Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire
– Donald Trump's "Thank You" tour rolled into Hershey, Pa., Thursday night, where he promised to do something to end suffering in Syria. "When I look at what's going on in Syria, it's so sad," he said, per the New York Times. "It's so sad, and we’re going to help people." He promised to "build and help build safe zones in Syria, so people will have a chance," and said Gulf states would help pay for the move. Analysts have warned that such a move could set up a confrontation with Russia, and the Times notes that this is the first time Trump has repeated his "safe zones" promise since he started receiving security briefings. Trump also used his speech to criticize the media and recap the election, describing his victory in Pennsylvania as a "landslide," though the Times notes that his margin of victory over Hillary Clinton was 44,292 votes out of a total of 6.1 million. He also thanked black voters for being "too smart" to turn out to vote for Clinton, the AP reports. "That was the big thing, so thank you to the African-American community," he said. Many in the crowd wore Santa hats instead of Trump hats, and Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer describes the rally as "the political equivalent of Festivus—all about the airing of grievances and Trump boasting about his feats of strength." (Earlier Thursday, Trump attacked Vanity Fair after it published a scathing review of the steakhouse in Trump Tower.)