Will the Abject Failure of the Tulsa Rally Wake Trump Up to How Badly He is Failing?

Apparently, the polls that showed him losing to Joe Biden by double digits were not enough to wake up Donald Trump to just how poorly he’s been performing over the last six months. But maybe his total failure of a rally in Tulsa will be enough to alert him to the levels of danger he is currently facing?

The Tulsa rally on Saturday night was an absolute mess, the lowest energy of any Trump event in history.

He’s given the media reason to gloat, finally.

New York Times:

President Trump’s attempt to revive his re-election campaign sputtered badly on Saturday night as he traveled to Tulsa for his first mass rally in months and found a far smaller crowd than his aides had promised him, then delivered a disjointed speech that did not address the multiple crises facing the nation or scandals battering him in Washington.

The weakness of Mr. Trump’s drawing power and political skills, in a state that voted for him overwhelmingly and in a format that he favors, raised new questions about his electoral prospects for a second term at a time when his poll numbers were already falling. And rather than speak to the wide cross-section of Americans who say they are concerned about police violence and systemic racism, he continued to use racist language, describing the coronavirus as “Kung Flu.”

While the president’s campaign had claimed that more than a million people had sought tickets for the rally, the 19,000-seat BOK Center was at least one-third empty during the rally. A second, outdoor venue was so sparsely attended that he and Vice President Mike Pence both canceled appearances there.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, falsely blamed the small numbers on “radical protesters” and the news media who he said had frightened away supporters. But there were few protests in the area and no sizable effort to block entrances, and there was a strong security presence.

Mr. Trump was furious about the unused outdoor stage and the comparatively thin crowd in the stadium, according to two people familiar with his reaction. News broadcasts carried video of the partially empty stadium, and even the Drudge Report, a reliably conservative website, carried an all-caps headline that said “MAGA LESS MEGA” with a picture of rows and rows of empty blue seats.

Yes. That happened.

The Times goes on to give their theories about what led to this disaster, which I don’t care about or agree with. But they are able to promote whatever they want, because the Trump people aren’t going to explain it.

Firstly, the Times and the rest of the media may or may not be exaggerating the enthusiasm levels. There is no way to know without being there, because we do know that these people just lie. But we see these pictures:

Is it possible that these were taken as the rally was filling up? Sure. But as the Times mentioned, Trump and Pence canceled a second event, which seems an objective measure of the fact that there weren’t crowds big enough, and Trump didn’t want to have photoshoots of him speaking to empty crowds.

The rallies are a massive part of the Trump brand, and the biggest thing about that was that they were always full, there were always people waiting outside.

In terms of logistics, yes, there are issues that can be blamed. The coronavirus hoax creates all kinds of problems, and many people would no doubt be afraid of violence, given the present state of things. But whose fault are those problems? Who allowed the coronavirus hoax to get completely out of control? Who allowed the blacks to just keep on rioting? I don’t know – who is the President of the United States?

The logistics issues are simply part of the larger issue, which is that Donald Trump has abdicated, refusing to be a leader during the two biggest crises in American history, which happened back-to-back in the last four months. He has failed, miserably, to address any of this.

He should have said the virus fears were faked, and the lockdown was a Democrat power-play. He should have been spamming his Twitter feed with Alex Berenson material, he should have invited in Elon Musk to talk about it. He should have pushed back against all of this, he should never have publicly appeared with Anthony Fauci and given credibility to these stupid theories. If he himself was confused, he should have brought in his own experts who weren’t directly linked to Bill Gates like Fauci and Madam Birx are directly linked to Bill Gates.

He should have used the Justice Department to do mass arrests of the rioters, and he should have continually been out there, denouncing all of this. He should have thrown caution to the wind with regards to political correctness, and called these blacks and white women rioting out as animals who are attacking the foundations of our civilization.

Instead, he did virtually nothing on either issue. He sat back, and he allowed the events to happen, without his input.

Combined, his inability to deal with either of these cascading crises is the biggest failure of any leader at any point in history, and comparisons to Nero are absolutely appropriate.

Shockingly, if you remove the neckbeard, Nero had a very similar look to Trump. Similar physiognomy.

Nero also relied heavily on massive spectacle to distract from the issues with his rule. Nero refused to address problems, because he didn’t have the strength of will to do it, and then as they came to their inevitable conclusion, he is said to have fiddled, refusing even at the moment of peak crisis to lead the people. He was a populist who thought he could rely on support from the peasants indefinitely, because he figured that he would always have the peasant masses on his side, and brushed aside the fact that the elite were constantly plotting against him. You should read about him, it’s really incredible, the similarities.

This all having been said, Nero did do a lot more for the people than Trump ever did. He did tax the rich for the sake of his beloved peasant support base. Trump conversely has the support of the peasants and the disdain of the elite without actually doing anything for the peasants or against the elite.

The riots caused as a result of agitating the elite, and the refusal to address them though – this is a perfect comparison. Nero was very sloppy in addressing the people that plotted against him, he was sloppy in providing them with reasons to oppose him, and eventually, that sloppiness caught up with him and his enemies overthrew him. He is now the most well-known Roman Emperor, specifically because of his failure. The Great Fire was likely not even his fault, but this is one of many things he is blamed for, because the historians of the time just blamed him for everything that happened under his reign, as it was assumed that he, as a negligent leader, was responsible for everything bad that happened under his rule.

If Donald Trump does not get a grip on all of this, right now, then the jig is up. He cannot possibly win in 2020 without addressing these problems, which his negligence caused. Both the lockdown and the cultural revolution are on him. Everyone knows that, fundamentally, and even diehard Trump fans are looking at this situation and saying, “this man is doing nothing.”

The thing with the blacks in particular – no single Trump supporter likes what is going on there. But all Trump supporters see that Trump is NOT addressing it. He can do this thing of “oh well, I can’t really do anything, you see, I’m just a helpless victim as much as you all” – but if he is truly that incompetent, then that is its own issue.

But he won’t even come out and say it. He will not say that these blacks are wrong. America was a good country. We did nothing but good for these blacks. Even all the way back to slavery, we treated them fairly. We treated them much more fairly than the black slave traders we bought them from treated them. Since slavery, we have done nothing but try to help these blacks. We have zero guilt, for anything. But no one is saying that. Black Lives Matter remains unchallenged. We all know they are wrong, in our hearts we know that. But there is no one, other than Tucker Carlson, to confirm that to us.

I hope that the failure in Tulsa will be a wakeup call to Trump, and that in these few remaining months, he will do something to make up for his failures. People will tolerate a lot from a leader. What they will not tolerate is weakness. Trump’s responses to these manufactured crises has shown weakness, and his weakness was on full display Saturday night when no one bothered to show up to see him, after he’d claimed that a million people wanted in.

Understand: if he’d been leading a campaign against Black Lives Matter for the last month, that stadium would have been overflowing. There would have been hundreds of thousands of people outside the stadium, standing with the leader against the enemy.

Because this speaks to a fundamental part of the human brain, this black uprising. It feels, on the most basic human level, that we are being overwhelmed by a foreign enemy. The people want to rally. In many ways, Trump has been handed a populist revolution on a golden platter, and he’s denying it.

Nero had the support of the peasants, but when the elite rose an army against him, he failed to rally the peasants to defend him, and he was overthrown. He fled to the country, where he was too cowardly to kill himself, forcing a subordinate to do it for him. Trump is looking forward to a repeat of this. If he doesn’t get the situation under control, and rally the people to him, he’s not even going to be able to be in Washington come the election. He’ll be hiding out in Mar-a-Lago, as the enemy rallies in Washington.

This can be turned around. But it’s going to be very difficult, and he needs to start it immediately. He needs to understand that the same people who are saying he’s going to win by a landslide told him there were a million people coming to this Tulsa rally.