Middleboro Review 2: Here's Why Trump's Tulsa Rally Troubles Go WAY BEYOND the Pitiful Turnout

Monday, June 22, 2020

Here's Why Trump's Tulsa Rally Troubles Go WAY BEYOND the Pitiful Turnout

Donald Trump had several weeks to plan his return to the campaign trail after three months of a COVID-19 enforced lockdown. He chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, a deep red city and state that should have guaranteed a capacity crowd of glassy-eyed disciples. but things didn't work out exactly as planned.

According to the Tulsa fire department, Trump's rally managed to pack in a measly 6,200 of The Donald's dimwitted devotees. That's less than a third of the 19,000 people the arena can accommodate. What's more, Trump and his campaign bragged repeatedly about having a million requests for tickets and they projected that there would be an overflow crowd of 40,000-60,000 out side the arena where Trump would give an additional speech.

However, the attendance turned out to be far less than projected. The overflow crowd never materialized at all, leading to the cancellation of the outdoor activities. If Trump thought that this rally would be his opportunity to turn around his polling slump (he's losing to Joe Biden in every national poll, as well as in the crucial swing states), he must be mighty disappointed this morning. And his disappointment generally translates into fury directed at the "losers" responsible for his humiliation. Because, of course, it's never him.

On Sunday morning Trump campaign advisor Mercedes Schlapp was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. She was there to attempt to put a positive spin on the previous evening's fiasco. That plan didn't work out very well either (video below):

Wallace: Your campaign said that more than a million people wanted tickets to this rally, but we all saw the pictures last night. The arena was no more than two-thirds full, and the outdoor rally that had been planned for the overflow crowd was canceled because there was no overflow crowd. Question: What happened?
Schlapp: When it comes to understanding how the rallies work, it's a first-come-first-serve basis. Basically what the one million RSVPs include, it's an opportunity for us to gather data, to get information obviously.

Schlapp went on to make absurd excuses about people having been too frightened by protesters to show up. But she didn't explain how more than 90% of the predicted hundred thousand rally-goers were scared off by a few protesters, who were kept blocks away from the arena by the police. She also bragged about the number of people who watched online which, of course, included many Trump opponents and other curious independents. To his credit, Wallace wouldn't let Schlapp deflect, and reminded her that Trump is always talking about the attendance at his rallies as a measure of his popularity. But now he isn't popular enough to draw supporters in the right-wing hothouse of Oklahoma.

Wallace also disputed Schlapp's false assertion that protesters prevented anyone from attending. Schlapp actually wants people to believe that Trump's supporters stayed home because they didn't want to expose their families to protesters. But exposing them to a deadly virus apparently wasn't a problem.

More importantly, Schlapp's reply to Wallace revealed what she considered to be the primary objective for the rally and the reason it should be regarded as a success. "It's an opportunity," Schlapp admitted, "for us to gather data." Indeed it is. Everyone who requests a free ticket to the event is required to provide their name and other personal identification. That's all entered into a database that is later used to contact potential voters. Trump's campaign chairman, Brad Parscale made the same admission prior to the Tulsa affair, tweeting that this would be the "Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time."

There's just one problem. There are reports that an army of Tik-Tok users requested tickets that they had no intention of using. It's hard to estimate the precise impact of this Trump trolling project, but there were thousands of interactions with the prank on social media. So somewhere between the 6,200 people who showed up at the rally, and the million who allegedly requested tickets, there an untold number of fake respondents. That means that there is a significant amount of fake data currently residing in the Trump campaign database. And that's on top of the fake data that was there before this event. [NOTE: News Corpse is in that database, despite never having provided any information] So when the campaign begins its voter outreach they will be wasting huge sums of money and effort on ghost voters.

In the end, the legacy of the Tulsa rally will be that it revealed the softening support for Trump's reelection, while simultaneously flooding his campaign database with bogus info. But at least he had the opportunity to soak up some cheers from his hardcore fans, while reinforcing his reelection themes of being able to drink water with one hand, stopping coronavirus testing, and defending Confederate statues. WINNING?

LINK

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms sums up Trump's Tulsa rally in one perfect word: 'embarrassment'

On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms chatted with host Jake Tapper about Donald Trump’s indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bottoms summed up the event, and Trump’s remarks, nicely, saying he “continues to try and divide us and really inflames the worst in people.” In the clips below, Bottoms talks about Juneteenth, Trump’s “joke” about COVID-19 testing, and the November election.

As Daily Kos covered, Trump had a meager turn out for in-person attendance. According to the Tulsa fire department, the rally had a turn-out of fewer than 6,200 people. In terms of pandemic safety, that’s inarguably a good thing, especially as masks were not required to attend the event. Bottoms said she hopes “this is a preview for November,” adding that, “people are recognizing that this man is a danger to our country, a danger to our democracy and he should not be the president of the United States of America.”

Overall, Bottoms described the rally as an “embarrassment.” Trump, as Bottoms accurately pointed out, did not talk about “healing,” nor did he “recognize any of the racial tensions that are happening across our country.” Trump, of course, took time during the rally to lament the loss of confederate statues, saying the “left-wing mob” wants to “vandalize our history” when people actually just want to replace public symbols of racism and oppression.

At the rally, Trump said he told officials to slow down coronavirus testing to keep the number of cases low. As of Sunday morning, officials tried to backpedal that comment and dismiss it as a joke, including White House trade adviser Peter Navarro describing it as “tongue in cheek” while on CNN. But for the 120,000 recorded lives lost in the United States alone, the ongoing public health crisis is far from a laughing matter.

“This is no time to joke,” Bottoms said in a clip that’s quickly gaining traction on Twitter. “Even if it were a joke, which it was not, it was an inappropriate joke. Do you think the people—the 120,000 families out there who are missing their loved ones thought it was funny?"

You can check out the clips below.

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Trump rally failure punctuated by his staff testing positive

TULSA, OKLAHOMA - JUNE 20: Supporters attend a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump at the BOK Center, June 20, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Trump is holding his first political rally since the start of the coronavirus pandemic at the BOK Center on Saturday while infection rates in the state of Oklahoma continue to rise. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

How many needless Covid-19 deaths were caused by delays in responding? Most of them

Due to exponential viral spread, our delay in action was devastating. In the wake of the U.S. response, 117,858 Americans died in the four months following the first 15 confirmed cases. After an equivalent period, Germany suffered only 8,863 casualties. Scaling up the German population of 83.7 million to America’s 331 million, a U.S.-sized Germany would have suffered 35,049 Covid-19 deaths. So if the U.S. had acted as effectively as Germany, 70% of U.S. coronavirus deaths might have been prevented.

That means they were infected two weeks ago, or so. And could spread disease. And now we wait. Fortunately, only 6200 showed in Tulsa.

selected hotspot cases — Selected hotspots including AZ where Trump goes next and OK where Trump just was.
Yellow is increasing and Red is… bad.

Tim Miller/Bulwark:

Make Arenas Empty Again

In Tulsa, the Trump campaign transitions to farce.

The Trump on display in Tulsa was not a strong man steeling himself for a crackdown against protesters while standing astride a silent majority of mask-eschewing followers with a death wish.

Instead, out from behind the curtain came a weak and whiny D-list Rodney Dangerfield, obsessed with minor slights and not getting enough respect from the Fake News Media that he claims to hate but seems to be kind of super into.

I’m reading news reports of the rally like reading The Boston Globe after a Yankees win for the Schadenfreude.

Harry Enten/CNN:

There's no sign of 'hidden' Trump voters

Even though the national polls were accurate in 2016, one of the complaints I hear most often about the polls is that Trump's supporters are either lying or won't talk to pollsters. Polls like Ipsos get around that argument because they use machines (e.g. they're done online) to conduct the interviews. There's no reason to lie to a machine. If Trump was doing significantly better in these non-live interview polls, then these critics of the polls may have a point.

The evidence indicates these detractors are, at least in this moment, wrong. There's no sign of shy Trump voters. Trump doesn't do any better in polls without a live interviewer.

The average of national surveys (accounting for the fact that some pollsters survey more often) this week from pollsters who didn't have a live interviewer put Biden up over Trump 50% to 39% (10 points unrounded). That's a huge advantage and very similar to the latest live interview poll average that has Biden up 51% to 41%.

Are you a K-pop stan? Read this and this:

WaPo: Trump rallies in red-state America — and faces a sea of empty blue seats

AP: Trump comeback rally features empty seats, staff infections

NY Times: Trump Rally Fizzles as Attendance Falls Short of Campaign’s Expectations

CNN: Sick staff and empty seats: How Trump's triumphant return to the campaign trail went from bad to worse

Jonathan Allen/NBC: Trump's deflating Tulsa turnout reveals a deeper problem for him

Politico: Trump campaign blames protesters for disappointing turnout at Tulsa rally

Bloomberg: Trump’s Tulsa Rally Adds to Week of Warning Signs for Campaign

The headlines Trump was hoping for, amirite?

The visuals Trump was hoping for, amirite?

WaPo:

The battle over masks in a pandemic: An all-American story

Mask-wearing for some people is an identifier of broader beliefs and political leanings. Like so many issues rooted in science and medicine, the pandemic is now fully entangled with ideological tribalism. This has played out before: helmets for motorcyclists, seat belts in cars, smoking bans in restaurants. All of those measures provoked battles over personal liberty.

Now it’s masks and the coronavirus, with face coverings emerging as an emblem for what cleaves the nation. A flurry of recent studies supports wearing cloth face coverings as a means to limit transmission of the novel coronavirus, which causes the illness covid-19. To many people, masks represent adherence to civic duty and a willingness to make individual sacrifices for the greater good of public health. To others, masks symbolize government overreach and a violation of personal liberty.

President Trump does not wear a mask, even when in the company of staffers and other officials who do. His press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said Friday that she will not wear a mask at the Trump rally Saturday in Tulsa.

The thing about Tulsa is that it’s part of chaos theory: maybe nothing happens this time because you got lucky. But many more rallies are planned, and you can’t keep getting away with it.

Miami Herald:

Local governments should order people to wear masks in public, Florida doctors say

Mask-wearing for some people is an identifier of broader beliefs and political leanings. Like so many issues rooted in science and medicine, the pandemic is now fully entangled with ideological tribalism. This has played out before: helmets for motorcyclists, seat belts in cars, smoking bans in restaurants. All of those measures provoked battles over personal liberty.

Now it’s masks and the coronavirus, with face coverings emerging as an emblem for what cleaves the nation. A flurry of recent studies supports wearing cloth face coverings as a means to limit transmission of the novel coronavirus, which causes the illness covid-19. To many people, masks represent adherence to civic duty and a willingness to make individual sacrifices for the greater good of public health. To others, masks symbolize government overreach and a violation of personal liberty.

President Trump does not wear a mask, even when in the company of staffers and other officials who do. His press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said Friday that she will not wear a mask at the Trump rally Saturday in Tulsa.

This is the Louisiana DPH:

Joseph Kanter@JoeKanter

· Jun 19, 2020

Two concerning clusters of COVID identified in Louisiana today:
- college bars near the LSU campus in BR, over 100 reports received so far
- informal high school graduation parties in Nola, investigation ongoing
https://t.e2ma.net/message/s0saye/kazj6k …

Joseph Kanter@JoeKanter

While young adults *on average* do not suffer serious complications from COVID:

1- they still can. We have seen plenty of individual case reports.

2- it’s not about them. It’s about their contacts...their parents, their grandparents, the grocery clerk who they’ll expose.

121

8:25 PM - Jun 19, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

70 people are talking about this

Michelle Norris/WaPo:

Why did it take so long to set Aunt Jemima free?

Her name should have fallen off boxes and bottles years ago, and the fact that it didn’t suggests that the companies that controlled the brand for more than a century have all been slaves to profit — holding onto a valuable trademark that’s internationally known and historically offensive.

I admit to having a complicated relationship with Aunt Jemima. She occupies a secret branch of my family tree. For a period of time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, my grandmother, Ione Brown, was part of an army of women who worked as traveling Aunt Jemimas, visiting small-town fairs and rotary-club breakfasts to conduct pancake-making demonstrations at a time when the notion of ready-mix convenience cooking was new.

I never knew about my grandmother’s work until long after she died. It was one of those things my family never really talked about. I learned about it while researching a family memoir called “The Grace of Silence.” I learned that she made good money and covered a region including Iowa, the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. She was often treated like a celebrity in small towns, but could not stay in local hotels. She kept an eye out for houses that had a small sign in the window that said “TOURIST,” a code for homes that provided lodging and meals to black people.

Complicated history, take a moment to learn about it.

Stephanie McCurry/Atlantic:

The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State

The actual Confederate States of America was a repressive state devoted to white supremacy.

For the four years of its existence, until it was forced to surrender, the Confederate States of America was a pro-slavery nation at war against the United States. The C.S.A. was a big, centralized state, devoted to securing a society in which enslavement to white people was the permanent and inherited condition of all people of African descent.

Christine Emba/WaPo:

A monumental shift

Memorials to white supremacy are falling. What will replace them?

In Philadelphia, protesters vandalized a statue of former mayor and police commissioner Frank Rizzo. Known for his brutal policing of black and LGBTQ communities in the 1960s and ′70s, Rizzo opposed school integration and encouraged his constituents to “vote white.” The statue was later removed from its place of honor across from Philadelphia’s City Hall and is now in storage.

The above is a visual/photographic story, click for the full experience.

And then his big rally: