There were all these predictions about Trump's rally in Tulsa being packed with maskless Trumpers who'd infect each other while giving the man the ego tongue-bath that he seemed to crave so. And a lot of the predictions involved violent demonstrations outside and people being clubbed and beaten for the Federal Crime of not loving our current president. Someone must have predicted an anemic turnout but I didn't see anyone forecast that even though it makes a certain amount of dramatic sense.
I remember how before the full thrust of Watergate, we'd wake up and think, before we so much as looked at the news, "Well, what evil, unethical thing will Nixon do today?" At some point, it morphed into, "Well, what piece of terrible news will Nixon get today?" We seem to have made that turn with Trump. Last week had to be the worst week of his presidency and maybe his life. Next week when the polls start reflecting this past week won't be so great, either.
I'm not much for mind-reading people from afar or even up close…but you have to think he got through that week of bad Supreme Court decisions and leaks from John Bolton's book and other body-blows by thinking, "Saturday night in Tulsa is when I start turning this all around." And then that packed hall was suddenly looking like a Padres home game against the Rockies or a meeting of The Bill Cosby Fan Club.
I'm waiting for the commercial that the Lincoln Project group must be making even as I type this, probably featuring that quote of Trump's about ordering that the testing be slowed down. If you were running for public office, you'd pray for your opponent to say something in front of a camera that was as self-destructive as that.
Have you seen their ads? Absolutely devastating…and it finally dawned on me why they're doing them. Their goal isn't really to elect Joe Biden. They may help accomplish that but their immediate mission is to drive Donald Trump out of what's left of his mind. And not that these bother him that much because they don't air on TV shows he watches but just imagine the video that Randy Rainbow is cobbling up at this very minute. Too bad he already did a parody of "Oklahoma!" to skewer Omarosa.
The one thing Trump had going for him was that he looked like a winner. It meant winning occasionally while spinning every single non-win as a win. There's no way he can spin last night as a win, either for him or for his working premise that if we all pretend the virus is over, it will be and he's the hero that beat it. I'm sorry there's even the suggestion out there that the bad turn-out was because pranksters made so many fake reservations for the rally. I would have liked the perception to be that so many seats were empty because even Trump supporters are wising up to a simple truth. It's that COVID-19 ain't a thing of the past and it's brain-dead stupid to not protect yourself and others around you.
