Donald Trump benefited from thousands of millions in free media in his 2016 campaign, too, as some in the business later granted. Back then he was a ratings monster; Cable television networks covered his rallies from start to finish as millions of Americans tuned in horrified or exhilarated by his brazen stunt: What would you say next?
Eight years later, the chains have backed down. Even Fake News no longer pays as much attention to the former president. His viewers have Trump fatigue, his opponents and supporters similar. Only the obscure right-wing channels that cater to MAGA types broadcast the entire rallies in real time; the rest provide video clips, if anything.
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
However, voters should not ignore Trump, especially given that his and President Biden's respective age and mental acuity are the overriding issue in their seemingly likely rematch in 2024. I believe (hope?) that a majority would emerge without doubt about which of the two candidates He is deranged. Hint: it's not Biden.
For those unwilling to stream a full, roughly 90-minute Trump show (even his fans often start leaving the rally), I watched it so you don't have to.
My selection was Saturday night performance in Waterford Township, Michigan, a working-class area north of Detroit. against the cold At the airport there, Trump wore a long black coat and black leather gloves, recalling his appearance at the January 6, 2021 rally, where said to the crowd heading to the Capitol: “If you don't fight like hell, you won't have a country anymore.”
Much of his rhetoric and style were also familiar: often incoherent ramblings, falsehoods, indecent comments (he took a swipe at 99-year-old Jimmy Carter, who had just completed a year in hospice), and sophomoric insults at his many “enemies”. in both parties.
Some Trump critics say it is got worse in his incitement to hate, as in his recent speech at a rally about political enemies being “vermin” and immigrants “poisoning” the blood of the nation. He did not repeat those Hitlerites. echoes in Michigan, although the feeling was there. No matter how much he escalates his rhetoric, it hasn't really changed: the intolerance, the lies, and the lack of respect for democratic norms and the rule of law. They are all still part of the playlist.
There is something that there is more than in the past, despite the children in the audience: bad words. And more than ever, given the dozens of criminal charges and the mountain of legal sanctions he faces, there are his complaints. These are no longer rallies. They are pity parties.
After about the first half hour, what struck me most was not what Trump said but how his audience responded. A Trump campaign speech is not accompanied by applause like the thousands of aspirational speeches I have heard before from other politicians. Instead, Trump supporters utter constant boos, jeers, and their own favorite profanities, in approving response to his incessant meowing.
Just minutes later, for the first of many times, he attacked “Crooked Joe” and called Biden “the worst president we've ever had.” (Fact check: An updated ranking of US presidents that same day, by leading academics, had Trump repeating like the worst; Biden debuted at No. 14.) Trump polled the crowd on whether to call Biden “crooked” or “sleepy”; he won the first one.
He checked your name “Pestle” (Nikki Haley); two prosecutors, “Deranged Jack Smith” (“he's an animal”) and “Fawwny” (Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis); Nancy Pelosi (she suggested his wealth is somehow suspect); and barack hussein Obama. He still deliberately mocks the Germanic pronunciation of retired Chancellor Angela Merkel's name; she did so during an anti-trade rant about “stupid” Americans who buy so many German BMWs, Volkswagens, and Mercedes-Benzes, most of which would have been made in South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, respectively.
Trump appeared to sap the crowd's initial energy by complaining at length about the incident the day before. news that New York Judge Arthur Engoron – “a corrupt judge,” he claimed three times – ordered him to pay about $450 million in fines and interest for financial fraud. It is “the weaponization of this horrible legal system,” he said, adding: “This is the real threat to democracy.”
Everything revolved around him, just as his accusations and trials for fraud, sexual assault, defamation and electoral subversion are all his. However, Trump wanted to have the adoration crowd who believe their self-inflicted legal problems are yours also.
“These are Democrats who definitely hate me,” he said of his antagonists, starting with Biden. “They hate you too, I have to tell you.” Another time: “We're all in this together.” And an hour later: “Every time radical left democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists accuse me, I consider it a great badge of honor. I am being accused by you. Never forget.”
Trump's continued denial of his 2020 loss peppered his comments throughout. “We won twice,” he snapped at one point. He blamed his failure to finish a border wall on the fact that “the election was rigged.” He repeated his lies about 2020 voter fraud in majority-Black Detroit, long debunked by the state's Republicans, Trump's attorney general, the courts and anyone who has looked at the facts. (“We have to watch Detroit. Go, go, go, go.”)
“American carnage” was a major theme, just as it was in his 2017 inaugural address. “Every one of our rotten cities is run by Democrats,” Trump said, stoking the red divide between the rural countryside and the urban blue in the country. “We are worse than a Third World country. …Look at our airports,” said the man who repeatedly promised an infrastructure bill. (It was Biden who delivered; his bipartisan infrastructure bill includes $25 billion to modernize American airports.)
Trump returned again and again to blame Biden for the crush of migrants at the southern border. “Welcome to the Congo, people,” he said, stating that the Africans came from prisons and asylums. He promised “the largest deportation in history,” which would be economically disastrous, and took credit for a new phrase, “bigrant crime,” as in Biden, immigrant crime. “Oh, that's good, that's smart,” he said, pointing to his brain.
The non sequiturs were constant. Trump went from complaining about his Georgia case to directly speaking, unrelated and chilling, about compensating police officers accused of misconduct once he is president: “You can stop [crime] in a day, in an hour, if you get really nasty and really hard.” And it said this: “The great capital, Washington, DC, is under siege. “I will always defend Medicare and Social Security, unlike Birdbrain.”
It is not a joke. That's what he said. If you don't believe me, see for yourself.
Spoiler alert: the man is not fit to be president.
