Here's the full crowd as #TrumpinAZ finishes up. pic.twitter.com/iUGVUmppGZ
— David Catanese (@davecatanese) August 23, 2017
Here's an angle from the opposite side of the room. #TrumpinPhx pic.twitter.com/xg0G34eJ7r
— David Catanese (@davecatanese) August 23, 2017
I know it seems a lot longer, but remember — it’s been less than a week!
The reviews were positively brutal:
Washington Post – “As Trump ranted and rambled in Phoenix, his crowd slowly thinned”
Vox – “In Phoenix, Donald Trump committed a sin he’s never committed before: he was boring”
Slate – “Trump’s Phoenix Rally Was An Embarrassing Therapy Session”
He's burning down every last bit of damage control work his staff and other Republicans have been trying to do for a week
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 23, 2017
The insult to His Narcissism has not been forgotten… or forgiven! From Bloomberg, Monday 28 August, “Trump Punishes Longtime Aide After Angry Phoenix Speech, Sources Say”:
Donald Trump was in a bad mood before he emerged for a confrontational speech in Arizona last week.
TV and social media coverage showed that the site of his campaign rally, the Phoenix Convention Center, was less than full. Backstage, waiting in a room with a television monitor, Trump was displeased, one person familiar with the incident said: TV optics and crowd sizes are extremely important to the president.
As his surrogates warmed up the audience, the expanse of shiny concrete eventually filled in with cheering Trump fans. But it was too late for a longtime Trump aide, George Gigicos, the former White House director of advance who had organized the event as a contractor to the Republican National Committee. Trump later had his top security aide, Keith Schiller, inform Gigicos that he’d never manage a Trump rally again, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Gigicos, one of the four longest-serving political aides to the president, declined to comment…
A week later, Trump was still reminiscing about the event.
“You saw the massive crowd we had,” he said at a White House news conference on Monday with Finland President Sauli Niinisto. “The people went crazy when I said, ‘What do you think of sheriff Joe?’ Or something to that effect.”…
It was probably gonna happen anyway, if his aides weren’t able to distract him, but how much of the speed and ugliness by which Trump pardoned Arpaio were due to the fact that his fee-fees had been so wounded by the not-Arpaio-supporting majority of Phoenix residents?
Trump's mind quadruples the crowds in front of him like a CG artist embellishing a Game of Thrones battle scene. Also, he adds dragons.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) August 23, 2017
Jerzy Russian
I know I keep writing this, but Christ, what an asshole.
Major Major Major Major
@Jerzy Russian: For me, Romney was the embodiment of “Christ, what an asshole.”
I don’t have one for Trump yet.
JGabriel
via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Wha? Trump has always been boring. The fact that he had large crowds whooping it up doesn’t mean Trump wasn’t boring – it means his crowds were boors.
Jerzy Russian
@Major Major Major Major: Reasonable people can disagree on whether Romney was as asshole or a dick. I think he was kind of a dick myself. He probably still is a dick, but I have not heard from him lately.
patrick II
Who controlled the camera angles during the speech? I assume the television stations, not the Trump campaign. I had no idea from watching what I saw on television that this was happening — and its important. They still like big ratings of the Trump big drama rather than letting us know how hollow his words rung even with his own people. I half agree and Trump about his fake media charge — its what they are faking that we disagree about.
sukabi
I sense a pattern here… Mr. “You’re fired” is too much of a baby to look someone in the eyes and actually fire them. Always has someone else do it for him.
Mel
And then there’s this , because what better way to make our towns and cities welcoming and safe than to throw some more tanks and grenade launchers into the mix. I am gobsmacked. The sheer stupidity of this is stunning.
sukabi
@Mel: that is another example of Drumpf undoing Obama’s directives…
He’s hell bent on reveating everything Obama did.
(((CassandraLeo)))
Schooley may have a point, but if Daenerys Targaryen ever met this motherfucker, I’m almost certain the last word he’d ever hear in his miserable, misspent life would be “Dracarys”.
westyny
@Major Major Major Major: Christ, what a Balrog.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@westyny: This strikes me as an unfair comparison to the Balrog.
sukabi
Reversing…stupid autocorrect.
kilo50
I think he knew he was boring. When he pulled out the quote of his statement regarding Charlottesville, the one which left out the many sides statement, he said something to the effect of “stay with me here, I’ll be fast”. he knew he was failing up there. hell, watching it on TV you could get a pretty good measure of the “crowds” boredom. He was tanking and he knew it. how many more times can he pull this off. How many more Apaio’s can pull out of his hat?
hovercraft
@Jerzy Russian:
RMoney is a dick and and an asshole, so you are both correct. After first going to the golden tower to genuflect before the Orange Shitstain when he thought it would help him beat Obama, he donned the mantle of Elder Republican Statesman last year, only to relapse and start genuflecting when it looked like there was the possibility he would become Secretary of State. Since that ship sailed he’s back to Elder Statesman mode. In other words he’s Paul Ryan without the the gavel, loved by the media and as useful as tits on a bull, prone to making disapproving noises that have no effect on anyone.
Twitler is a deatheater, assholes and dicks can’t destroy the world.
; (
SRW1
Trump is craving for adoration like a junkie is craving for heroin. Since he can’t get adoration any other way, yet needs his highs, he still does campaign rallies months after the election.
The failure to fill the venue in Phoenix and the crowd starting to leave early may set in motion a phenomenon medicine calls desensitization, i.e. the efficacy of a drug waning over time. What we can expect then is the usual response of a junkie: escalating the dose and the frequency of the drug, which is to say more frequent rallies with shriller performances by El Trumpolini. Fasten your seat belts.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JGabriel: I think it’s fair to say Trump up tell now has been entertaining in the way a drunk ranting a bar is. But go watch that Phoenix thing, he just was plan dull.
Trump’s audience, and that’s what Trump’s base is, will forgive everything but being bored.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@kilo50:
Like I said, Trump’s already had a white woman killed by his surrogates and his audience wants another thrill. He’s getting ot the end of the line.
kilo50
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: A man with no morality in his role as carnival barker in chief. Just let your imagination run with that. Needing continual adoration just what are his limits of what he will or will not do.
ThresherK
My first impulse: “A lot of shoppers will listen to a pitch to get a free $4 paring knife.”
jl
Trump is what you might call an ‘humiliation rich’ environment. Hard to know what to concentrate on, they come so fast….. Squirrel!!
The pic in this post is good for vacant space. But I remember seeing some that nailed the deadly disappointment and boredom of the event as expressed in aimless and dispirited Trumpsters shuffling around. That was good to see since it showed that even some of the Trumpsters who showed up had that ‘WTF was this Trump crap all about anyway?’ type of look, which means more likely they may stay home the next election.
Depending on how much Trumpster BS happens in the next day, I may try to look into his comment that Finland and Russia/USSR have been great pals for the last hundred years. Did he say that at the presser in from the Finnish prime minister? What was his reaction?
But some other BS will come up and it’ll probably get lost. The whole Trump business is ugly and dangerous. and he needs to be removed from office. Only chance of that is if he gets so electorally toxic to the GOP, impeachment and removal is the only thing they can think of.
jl
Gallup tracking poll says Trump has been at 36 percent approval or less for last 10 days. Hasn’t been at 40 percent since July 11.
That is progress I guess. Aggregators probably have it somewhat higher, but Gallup is a consistent record over time to monitor trends and ‘progress’.
And to think that it is really all his own doing. Nothing much has really happened since his inauguration. Except Trump acting as toxic dumb and weird as rabid batshit. Hope it stays that way. Hope deaths and damage form Harvey are minimal. At this rate, Trump can do himself in all by himself. He doesn’t need any help.
gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx
hellslittlestangel
Is Christopher Cantwell facing federal charges? If not, I suppose he could get Sessions to cook some up.
EBT
Some days it’s real hard to remember success is more than your bank account.
jl
@hellslittlestangel: The potential for abuse of presidential power was a big issue during debates at the state conventions to ratify the Constitution. I think fair to say that there was general agreement that abuse of the presidential pardon power was a solid ground for impeachment and removal from office. So, if Trump wants to go in that direction, and GOPers get truly scared shitless about next elections, that would make it easy.
TriassicSands
You’ve got to be kidding me. Trump not boring? The man has the smallest repertoire of just about any politician I’ve ever seen. There may not be anything Trump can do that will make his cult members stop worshiping him, but it’s possible he may ultimately bore them to tears. Will they still want to hear about his historic 2016 victory in 2018 and 2019? What about the wall? When it isn’t built to the promised specifications and the Mexicans don’t pay for it will his followers still want to sit/stand through his moronic repetition of all things wall? His best hope is that they are all so stupid and ignorant that his five subjects described with a 100 word vocabulary (it goes up to 200 if you count every time he doubles his adjectives and adverbs) will keep them interested.
There are several reasons why I find it almost impossible to watch Trump for more than a few seconds. Apart from his making me sick to my stomach, he is crushingly boring. I’ve heard it all before.
Chris T.
I look forward to the day when the word “trump” means “narcissistic to the point of insanity; small-minded, grasping, greedy; with connotations of racism” in much the way that Vikund Quisling’s name came to mean “traitor”.
Amir Khalid
@EBT:
Indeed not. It’s also your stock portfolio, your Roller, your Lambo, your mansion, your Manhattan condo, your trophy wife, your mistress(es), your exclusive club memberships, your art collection, and the bling you wear. Among other things, of course.
Patricia Kayden
@kilo50: Perhaps the crowd would have been more engaged if they had had some protesters to beat up. Who knows?
TriassicSands
@jl:
For awhile I checked the Gallup Tracking Poll every day. I kept hoping that Trump would finally take a serious hit in the polls. Finally, I came to the conclusion that the daily poll simply vacillates around 37% or so. It goes up one day and down the next, but there isn’t always (and maybe never) a correlation between the news and what happens to his daily Gallup numbers. On August 13 and then again on the 24th he hit a record low of 34%. That seemed like progress, but he’s back up to 35% without having done anything good to warrant any improvement. It is possible that the infamous 27% is no longer operative. The cult that supports Trump may actually be dumber and crazier than the bozos who stuck with Bush no matter what.
In general, I think the US population gets a little dumber, a little more uninvolved, and more ignorant every year.
TriassicSands
@Patricia Kayden:
As I suggested above it could be his followers are finally getting bored. Going to a Trump rally has to be a lot like sitting through the same idiotic 45 second to one minute commercials over and over and over. If Trump were a pianist all he would ever play is “Chopsticks.” Badly.
TriassicSands
@EBT:
For Trump, success is screwing other people and having everyone know you came out on top. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this mentioned specifically, but Trump is probably the worst winner in recorded history.
mai naem mobile
@hovercraft: I have a friend whose dad did some occasional legal work for Romney and ran around in the same social circle in the 70s. Even he said Romney was an asshole.
As far as Dolt45, I switched channels during his speech because he was boring and had nothing new to say. It was his greatest hits. Like a tired old musician on those fundraising periods on PBS.
kilo50
@Patricia Kayden: Oh that would have ratcheted up the enthusiasm for sure. But that is a problem too. Beating up a protester is only good for a few episodes and eventually it will get completely anarchic. Will the power of norms being crushed stir anyone to take political action? i can’t see the GOP taking any plunge. It appears to be a situation unsolvable.
Gvg
If the crowds are finally thinning, that could be good. There is an energy fun to sitting among a huge crowd of like minded people. Of course my experience is college football madness but I think the Trump rallies were like that.
It’s also possible it was a mistake on his teams part to have a rally in August in 107 degree heat to wait to get in. I’ll wait and see if it happens again in a more reasonable climate. There is also the silliness of campaigning 3.5 years early. Heck that might have bored supporters a way by election even if he was’t making so many other mistakes. He will be a has been to adrenaline junkies long before the next election because he will have been on so long if it comes to that.
kilo50
My biggest concern is what will Trump do once he recognizes and yes he is that perceptive, when he comes to that point where he knows it will take more than tired repetitive rhetoric to get his followers high. Will he consciously cross that line into visual violence to keep his cult followers jazzed. If he does and no pushback is taken then we have truly passed from a proto-fascist government to an actual fascist government.
kilo50
@TriassicSands: I think his 10 to 5 percent cushion is largely due to one factor. It is his appeal to racists who previously did not vote due to the bothsides/rigged game depression regarding politics in this country. He appealed to the Bubba vote explicitly and all those racists came out. I saw people enthused and excited about voting that previously could have really cared less. So it seems this racism factor is now baked in for every candidate who cares only about getting elected and has no regard for decency.
sm*t cl*de
Dementia.
Matt McIrvin
@TriassicSands: The daily fluctuations in a single poll are always mostly noise. Look at HuffPo’s aggregator–it’s one of the few they still have running:
elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/trump-job-approval
I was concerned that Trump’s numbers actually seemed to be going up after Charlottesville, but I think it was really just a modest bounce back from his big health-care loss earlier. But you can see there is a gradual trend downward. I think the electorate has gotten more polarized such that a sudden shift in the numbers is nearly impossible to pull off absent some 9/11-sized crisis. George W. Bush never took a one-day big hit, even for Katrina or the financial crisis–he had that huge jump up on 9/11, a smaller jump up when he invaded Iraq, and I guess there was a little rise induced by his reelection campaign, but the rest was basically a gradual, relentless slide downward to the doghouse. The main difference with Trump is that he started out lower, and he hasn’t had any big crisis jumps.
different-church-lady
@Jerzy Russian: Here’s the hierarchy, from bottom to top:
3) Dick
2) Asshole
1) Evil
Therefore, Trump is neither a dick or an asshole.
different-church-lady
@sm*t cl*de: Myopia combined with misogyny.
different-church-lady
@Gvg:
The reports were that the crowd thinned during the speech when they were already in the comfort of the hall.
different-church-lady
@SRW1: “Chasing the Dragon”
Radiumgirl
@SRW1: There’s that. But I live in the hope that that the rubes will begin to wake up to his fakery and slowly figure out that he’s a blow-hard who can’t really deliver on anything that is going to improve their lives.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@kilo50: .
Two points to consider
a) Trump doesn’t think and just runs on emotion
b) “Deep state” has placed limits on him.
I bet A is why Kelly got Bannon fired to keep Bannon from whispering awful ideas in Trump’s ear constantly.
Ruckus
@SRW1:
Also like a junkie, he doesn’t understand that he’s gone as far as he can. In his case a lot farther actually. A junkie ODs because they can’t tell when far more than enough is enough. drumpf was never running for president, he was running for the adulation high. But he got all the fix can give him, now he has to perform. And junkies can’t manage that, first because that’s not what they are looking for and second because mostly one has to be stupid to keep putting that needle in, expecting something more every time from the same drug. The real problem for him is that the racist junkies that voted for him are loud but really not that many. The rest of the people that voted for him are just shallow and a lot of them are realizing that their fix was bad. They wanted a president who reflected their values and what they got was a shallow, vain, moron whose only value was himself.
The Moar You Know
Pool coverage is dictated by the campaign. Camera placement and suchlike. The media really needs to stop covering these. They won’t; they’ll make sure the circus goes on until we’re all dead, but they shouldn’t. They are not newsworthy.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@hovercraft:
Some say the world will end in assholes.
Some say with dicks…