Are Donals Trump fans finally getting tired of Trump’s rallies? Would they prefer to stay home—or head for the exits early—to watch History Channel footage of Mussolini and Hitler instead? And what were Hitler’s views on low-flow toilets, the ongoing scourge of CFC-free hair sprays, and the brutal depredations of whale-murdering windmills, anyway? Answer: He had none! Which may explain why he failed to take Stalingrad and no one in the Republican Party wants to name an airport after him. Well, not yet, anyway.
According to a new analysis by Daily Beast political reporter Jake Lahut, Trump’s rallies, once a raging rash on the buttocks of our body politic, have cooled down in the run-up to the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses—for a variety of reasons.
RELATED STORY: Donald Trump's speeches are turning into incomprehensible, fascist pablum
Taken as a whole, though, it makes one wonder how much Trump’s—and his most ardent fans’—hearts are still in this.
Now, Lahut writes, Trump’s rally schedule has shrunk significantly, to about two events per month.
Of course, to some degree Lahut is making an apples-to-oranges comparison. Trump was still a political upstart during the 2016 cycle, when he held his 323 rallies. And the campaign season was in full swing in 2020 when he hosted his 70 superspreader loser-paloozas. (To be fair, only one of those rallies killed Herman Cain, but you know how the liberal media loves to exaggerate.)
Also, he’s so far ahead of the rest of the GOP pack, he probably thinks he can phone it in, just like he did his pr*sidency. And he’s not entirely wrong.
“President Trump has all the momentum in the GOP primary,” one Trump confederate told The Daily Beast. “He is dominating in fundraising, polling, and energy on the ground. The rallies serve as an opportunity to fire up his base, but aren’t necessary as he turns toward the general election.”
That said, at this time during the 2015 presidential cycle, he was laying the groundwork for the 2016 election with a flurry of appearances. And now, as the Iowa caucuses approach, he’s showing up in court for civil trials he’s not required to attend (and which he’s already lost), whining that his legal problems are keeping him from campaigning in Iowa, and then taking the next day off to play golf. And it’s fair to ask whether Trump will be able to maintain any kind of consistent rally schedule when he actually is forced to show up in court for his criminal trials.
ABC News has also noticed Trump’s comparatively blasé approach to his 2024 “Make America Release Me From Prison” campaign, noting in a Sept. 8 story that he’s been far less eager to campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire than his competitors.
But 2024 is different from both 2016 and 2020. This year, Trump faces legal issues that may constrain his campaign activities going forward and make his chronic bout of explosive logorrhea even more problematic than usual.
As one former Trump adviser told The Daily Beast, “Honestly, given he has legal risk on many fronts, I’d probably do the same just to minimize anything that would fuck up his legal defense. Let everyone else flame out. Then hit the gas.”
All that said, Occam’s razor would suggest another reason Trump’s rallies are dwindling in number: Every time he goes onstage, it’s like the last days of David Koresh, if Koresh had thought one of the signs of the apocalypse was the sudden proliferation of soggy McDonald’s wrappers on Joe Biden’s watch.
RELATED STORY: Trump gave a speech. It was weird. Super weird. Why isn't the media's hair on fire?
As Lahut recounts in his piece, during a recent rally in Derry, New Hampshire, Trump talked about traveling the country and seeing “containers of McDonald’s where the container is six months old, cars have been riding on it, water has been raining on it.”
“It’s disgusting, what happened,” Trump continued. “It will be a part of my election—you know, it’s been a part of my election platform.”
When that pressing kitchen table issue somehow failed to engender wild applause, Trump went back to an old standby:
According to Lahut, when Trump asked, “Who hasn’t heard ‘The Snake’?” one person clapped, prompting Trump to declare, “Okay, good, like 45 percent of the room.” He then reread the poem that all but one of them had apparently already heard ad nauseam.
And if that’s not his 2024 campaign in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.
RELATED STORY: Fox has decided airing Trump live is too dangerous, but making him president again is A-OK
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
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According to a new analysis by Daily Beast political reporter Jake Lahut, Trump’s rallies, once a raging rash on the buttocks of our body politic, have cooled down in the run-up to the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses—for a variety of reasons.
RELATED STORY: Donald Trump's speeches are turning into incomprehensible, fascist pablum
Taken as a whole, though, it makes one wonder how much Trump’s—and his most ardent fans’—hearts are still in this.
Now, Lahut writes, Trump’s rally schedule has shrunk significantly, to about two events per month.
Of course, to some degree Lahut is making an apples-to-oranges comparison. Trump was still a political upstart during the 2016 cycle, when he held his 323 rallies. And the campaign season was in full swing in 2020 when he hosted his 70 superspreader loser-paloozas. (To be fair, only one of those rallies killed Herman Cain, but you know how the liberal media loves to exaggerate.)
Also, he’s so far ahead of the rest of the GOP pack, he probably thinks he can phone it in, just like he did his pr*sidency. And he’s not entirely wrong.
“President Trump has all the momentum in the GOP primary,” one Trump confederate told The Daily Beast. “He is dominating in fundraising, polling, and energy on the ground. The rallies serve as an opportunity to fire up his base, but aren’t necessary as he turns toward the general election.”
That said, at this time during the 2015 presidential cycle, he was laying the groundwork for the 2016 election with a flurry of appearances. And now, as the Iowa caucuses approach, he’s showing up in court for civil trials he’s not required to attend (and which he’s already lost), whining that his legal problems are keeping him from campaigning in Iowa, and then taking the next day off to play golf. And it’s fair to ask whether Trump will be able to maintain any kind of consistent rally schedule when he actually is forced to show up in court for his criminal trials.
ABC News has also noticed Trump’s comparatively blasé approach to his 2024 “Make America Release Me From Prison” campaign, noting in a Sept. 8 story that he’s been far less eager to campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire than his competitors.
But 2024 is different from both 2016 and 2020. This year, Trump faces legal issues that may constrain his campaign activities going forward and make his chronic bout of explosive logorrhea even more problematic than usual.
As one former Trump adviser told The Daily Beast, “Honestly, given he has legal risk on many fronts, I’d probably do the same just to minimize anything that would fuck up his legal defense. Let everyone else flame out. Then hit the gas.”
All that said, Occam’s razor would suggest another reason Trump’s rallies are dwindling in number: Every time he goes onstage, it’s like the last days of David Koresh, if Koresh had thought one of the signs of the apocalypse was the sudden proliferation of soggy McDonald’s wrappers on Joe Biden’s watch.
RELATED STORY: Trump gave a speech. It was weird. Super weird. Why isn't the media's hair on fire?
As Lahut recounts in his piece, during a recent rally in Derry, New Hampshire, Trump talked about traveling the country and seeing “containers of McDonald’s where the container is six months old, cars have been riding on it, water has been raining on it.”
“It’s disgusting, what happened,” Trump continued. “It will be a part of my election—you know, it’s been a part of my election platform.”
When that pressing kitchen table issue somehow failed to engender wild applause, Trump went back to an old standby:
According to Lahut, when Trump asked, “Who hasn’t heard ‘The Snake’?” one person clapped, prompting Trump to declare, “Okay, good, like 45 percent of the room.” He then reread the poem that all but one of them had apparently already heard ad nauseam.
And if that’s not his 2024 campaign in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.
RELATED STORY: Fox has decided airing Trump live is too dangerous, but making him president again is A-OK
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
Campaign Action