MAGA Rats Scurry To Save the Sinking Ship, Post MSG Disaster

The best political commentator alive, Charlie Pierce, tells a comical tale of waiting in line unsuccessfully for three hours to get into Trump’s Madison Square Garden/Nazi hate fest Sunday. He talks of chatting in line with a couple of Dubliners who wanted to get in just to say that they did and tell the folks back home about the circus; and of the bars along 33nd Street politely ejecting people for walking in wearing political gear (politics and religion being expressly forbidden in said establishments, for reasons which need no explanation.) Point being, a great many people were in that line, or already in the venue itself, to see what all the fuss was as opposed to being ardent Trump fans. I make this point because right-wing media spins any kind of attention as being tantamount to endorsement and votes in the bag and that simply is not true. Like so many things Trumpian, one result was intended and something else altogether was obtained by yesterday’s extravaganza. After you read Charlie Pierce’s take, read Heather Cox Richardson’s:

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight.

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.

Just to keep the record straight, there were two Nazi rallies at The Garden in 1939, the second one being on October 30 of that year. Hitler’s intentions were as clear cut as Trump’s but so much more efficiently executed. Now, the morning after, we see Trump’s minions go on TV and social media trying their best to spin everything to the MAGA advantage but it’s a day late and a dollar short.

The rally was so bad that Loomer thinks Hinchcliffe is in bed with the Harris campaign 😂 pic.twitter.com/Ksns1r4p9l

— Mason (@masonisonx) October 28, 2024

“No such thing as toxic masculinity.” Sure. No such thing as sexism, racism, none of that. Talk about an Uncle Tom Oreo sell out, if it gets worse than Donalds, I don’t want to see it.

But you hear the panic in these two missives. The idea of MAGA back in 2015 was to sell the dog whistle. Trump was successful with that in 2016. It wasn’t just the usual swinging of the pendulum back to the GOP after eight years of the Democrats, it was an enraged recidivism back to a pre-1960’s (or even further back) way of looking at life and the roles of people in society.

Trump now seeks to capture lightning in a bottle twice, but the problem is that now, he’s opened up the flow of hatred too intensely. He’s got it at firehose level. That’s too strong to be effective. When MAGA was a trickle, it was like watering the garden of hatred. A slow flow will saturate the earth and nurture the sprouts. It will encourage new growth. but if you turn the firehose on, you blast 3/4 of the garden out of the ground and into non existence.

And that’s undoubtedly what motivated Rick Scott to race right over to his phone and start pounding out a denunciation of “comedian” Tony Hinchcliff’s positively dreadful crack about Puerto Rico last night — and all of the rest of it. Hinchcliffe is a roast comic. And roasts have their place, if the designated place is amongst an insular group of people who are gently ribbing one another after decades of working together, that sort of thing. A roast comic, roasting a critical portion of the electorate, a week before Election Day, is an appallingly bad idea. And you can see Laura Loomer and Byron Donalds furiously trying to do damage control. A lot of damage got done last night.

Rep. @AOC: Right now the Trump campaign is scrambling. They're trying to blame this rhetoric about Puerto Rico on a so-called comedian. This is not a comedian. This is the Trump campaign. They invited this rhetoric on their stage for a reason. It was a chorus of speakers on that… pic.twitter.com/Otxp2j9Yre

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 28, 2024

So who authorized this? We have been told in no uncertain terms that it was not the Trump campaign. So who, if not them? We can only assume it was Trump himself. He’s the only one who could override his own campaign managers, right?

Trump is disintegrating farther and farther into mental illness by the day. This was going to be his great night, the capstone of his pyramid of chaos, the launchpad into four years (or many more) of fascist rule.  It didn’t work out that way. Or, to be more precise, we’ll see how well it worked out in a little over a week now. But if we had to make a decision right now, this minute, on how well Trump’s rally went, synonyms for disaster are the answer.

Here’s an image I enjoy, of Melania (who probably pocketed half a million bucks for showing up last night) trying to get through the moment.

As we have seen many times before in her infrequent public appearances with him, Melania is in a desperate struggle to escape his hand without it being painfully obvious to everyone. pic.twitter.com/honGgf7VYE

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 28, 2024

It’s so obvious that there is no connection on a human level between these two people. If you look at clips of married couples who really are connected, this is not how they act. I well remember Barack Obama’s first inauguration. Jill and Joe Biden were dancing and without saying a word a few things were obvious: Jill and Joe loved to dance. Jill and Joe loved each other. Jill and Joe were delighted to be where they were, when they were. It just exuded from them, a kind of naturalness and happiness, the kind of joy that happens when you’re in a moment where you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, doing anything else.

Donald and Melania, on the other hand, project as much intimacy as a rock. She’s the eye candy for hire, he’s got the checkbook. If those elements weren’t in place, that “couple” would not be together. Even on paper.

Oh well. Another week of this farce.

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