The Little Rally that Couldn't

Joy: Everyone is shocked.. This was an easy setup for Brad Parscale... They completely messed it up. Brad Parscale is now furiously trying to tweet excuses... There’s a lot of twitter traffic that says he was played by young people and K-pop fans who ordered tickets... pic.twitter.com/nFeA93LTX9

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) June 21, 2020

The weird thing is, the scheme to reserve tickets was known days ahead of the rally, but the Trump campaign was still bragging about how many tickets were being reserved, as if they genuinely expected a really large crowd, anyway. Then, instead of either acknowledging what we all know, they could have at least tried chalking it up to fears over COVID-19, instead of what they ultimately went with:

Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally.

They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering.

Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!https://t.co/eM2nohMEy6

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 20, 2020

Huh. It was the infamous Antifa ninjas, which is why it was so hard to see them there. Also, I thought Trump was pretty sure the Tulsa police were going to be stopping all of that. (Also, Trump rallies have had protesters before. Much of the hoopla about the dangers of Antifa comes from....well, Trump.)

The reality is, how many people are still excited about Trump's act? He did 15 minutes on how he really can drink water but his arm was all tuckered out from 600 salutes, and man, what a slippery ramp West Point had. Like, he was devoting time to criticism from a whole week ago, that should have been forgotten by now. Did they show up to hear him confess about slowing down COVID-19 testing and calling the disease that has now killed 120K Americans the "Kung flu" (so these things could be walked back by the White House as "jokes")?

It was suggested by some that Trump had this rally not so much for the sake of campaigning (in a state he won handily in 2016) but for the sake of his ego. I'm not sure it did anything for either his campaign or his morale.