Last night Donald Trump kicked off his “Neener Neener, I’m Going to be the President” tour with an appearance in Cincinnati in which the popular-vote-losing president-elect regaled a crowd of almost-exclusively white supporters with a play-by-play recounting of what he insisted on calling his “landslide victory.”
What wasn’t apparent to television viewers of this strange spectacle was how sparse this crowd really was. Photos of the event reveal that the auditorium was half-filled, if that. It’s not clear if this was due to traffic snarls that kept his fans from the arena, or to the public’s lack of interest in attending an event that had no purpose other than burnishing Trump’s ego.
Crowd gathering at #Trump 'thank you' rally in #Cincinnati #Ohio – surprisingly uncrowded. pic.twitter.com/7ZX1VwIhAV
— Ruth Sherlock (@Rsherlock) December 2, 2016
— Chris Sheridan (@ChrisSheridan34) December 1, 2016
Looking at these pics of the half-empty arena, I couldn’t help but think of the sequence in This is Spinal Tap after Nigel Tufnel quits the band mid-tour, forcing the rest of the band to rename themselves Spinal Tap Mach II.
If the crowds continue to shrink, Trump may end up having to resort to doing dinner theater.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAI1SjHcyQA
Or maybe Trump’s crowds will start growing again. Who the hell knows? Who the hell knows about anything any more?
His appeal is becoming more selective.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a few people who voted for Trump “in protest” are having Brexit-like feelings.
“Wait, you mean the guy I elected for the lulz is actually going to be president? Oh, jeez.”
@Alan Robertshaw:
Turns out, without a specific enemy to inveigle against, he’s losing energy. Sad!
He’s spent his whole life selling his name as too good for us Poors. Everything he’s marketed has been at a premium, from steaks to plane tickets. (Turns out, if you price yourself out of the market, you don’t make any money!) And he never learned how to make a quality product. Without the energy of an upcoming election, us Poors aren’t turning out just to hear him talk. I just wish he could have reaped this whirlwind a year ago.
Maybe if his drummer died in a ‘freak accident …’
I think (and hope) that even setting aside policies, ideology and party loyalty, the vast majority of Americans will be heartily sick of Trump’s egomania and shameless self-promotion by the time the mid-term elections roll around.
From wank-wank to womp-womp in just three weeks. Sad.
(ha ha, not really)
In other news, Pence’s D.C. neighbors are flying pride flags. Heh.
May I share this off-topic epiphany I’ve experienced please? I just learned about the ring theory, described here which lays out a brilliant social rule for when it is okay to complain to someone and when it isn’t.
An excerpt:
I realized this perfectly explains why some privileged people can be so infuriating. The privileged people in the outer rings keep directing their complaints inwards towards the oppressed people in the inner rings.
He’s losing popularity. See Trumpgrets.
Somewhat on topic, somewhat off: Representative DelBene is trying to stop the Muslim registry before it happens. I’m having the opposite of Trumpgrets as I voted for this wonderful woman. 😀 http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/us-rep-delbene-bill-would-rightly-prohibit-any-religious-registry/
I’ve been playing some Football Manager 2017 on mobile and just got to the point where the game warns me that Brexit will make acquiring foreign players much more difficult in a few seasons. :p
Fuckin’ Cincy? Really? I grew up in the Greater Cincinnati area, and the Cincinnati community did nothing to deserve Trump…existing anywhere near it. The poor place.
Of course, now I’m wondering if he’s even tried chili spaghetti since he’s been there. It’s a Big Thing.
Kupo:
Register of a religious minority ? Didn’t a regime led by an Austrian failed artist do that ?
Small thing, David, I’m pretty sure it’s Spinal Tap Mark Two.
WWE crowds are never as large as they appear. Vince creates the illusion that they are by tarping over empty areas, so it seems like there aren’t seats there. This also eliminates the slight reflections of lights on the metal bits of the chairs and keeps the attention in the actual people. Pretty ingenious…
@Kevin
Yes. Trump wants to do it, and one of his backers cited the Japanese-American internment camps as precedent.
Losername: While this makes a lot of sense for individual traumas and dealing with the effects of specific social issues, when it comes to systemic injustices, you have to account for multiple rings for an indefinite duration at the same time.
There’s really no good personal problem that should be brought up to a person suffering a specific trauma, such as a hospital emergency. But for oppression, a victim on one axis (i.e. sexism) might be might be perpetuating a problem on another (i.e. racism). Recognizing that we can be inside one ring and outside another is vital.
So while this is a great way of reminding people not to hijack threads on one issue to redirect to themselves (i.e. “What about the men” in a thread about a specific act against women.) I think we need to be careful adopting it to the broader stage, lest people try and justify their position in the center of their circle as a way to ignore complaints from people in the center of their own.
Kupo:
‘They set aside their law when it proves inconvenient.’ House point for identifying where I’ve (probably badly) quoted it from.
I find it beggars belief that so many voters in a democratic republic back such a blatant constitutional abuse. As I understand it the measure would undermine provisions pertaining to both freedom of worship and separating church from state.
But then the only constitutional rule many Americans seem to care about these days has to do with their dangerous gunpowder fuelled toys.
@Kevin
Yeah, the people who support this think that it’s violating their religious freedom if they’re not allowed to discriminate against others based on their religion, sexuality, or gender.
@kupo
RNGesus, the gaslighting (or just blatant lying) going on there is disgusting. There’s recorded audio of him calling for registry, how the hell do they think they have plausible deniability?!
I watched (unwillingly; I was waiting for Chris Hayes’ show on MSNBC which was almost entirely pre-empted) about a half hour of that saffron howler monkey before I got done with what I was cooking and turned to a different channel.
He went from 0 (Lots of Dems want to work with me!*) to light speed (press said we wouldn’t win but we won bigly! Therefore lying, horrible, doubleplusungood press!!**) in record time.
Even though my ground turkey wasn’t quite finished, the thing that got me away from the stove and has started to really grate on my nerves was when he started with the whole I-don’t-want-to-say-anything-don’t-tell-anyone thing about his chief military advisor pick. On. National. Television. WTF is up with this??
I don’t know why this infuriates me so. Probably something to do with the debates where he kept “not saying” things about his opponents. But that is peak passive-agressive bullshit and last night was more like unprofessional and unserious silliness. But that was my limit.
*That was where I tuned in, don’t know how much came before.
**And had to brag about his unexpected win making one unnamed pundit cry. GRR.
I could only stand to watch this for about five minutes, but I swear I saw at least one Nazi salute in the crowd in that time, and a lot of people who were close-but-not-quite. That just creeps me out more and more.
Now that he has to actually work and not just get applauded at rallies, he doesn’t really want to be president, does he?
In the category of Trumpgrets: Trump voter had house foreclosed by Trump’s Treasury Secretary
I’ve seen it both ways; I actually looked for a bit on the internet to see if there was any definitive source and I couldn’t find one.
Perhaps our biggest hope is that people just get bored with his antics? I mean, he’s a narcissist, he wants to be in the news all the time, but who honestly wants to hear from and about the President all the time? The true believers will, probably. But, see…at least The Apprentice wasn’t on every single day. Just a thought.