Trump’s self-inflated public image is fading. He can’t pull in the crowds as he used to and he can’t hold onto the ones who do turn up. On MSNBC’s 11th Hour, Brian Williams commented, “The Trump rally has, let’s just say, lost a step since its heyday.” That’s an understatement.
At his first rally as ‘the former guy’, New York Times reported,
Yet in the audience and on the stage, the scene in Ohio on Saturday was reflective of how diminished Mr. Trump has become in his post-presidency, and how reliant he is on a smaller group of allies and supporters who have adopted his alternate reality as their own.
In her article, Alabama Canceling Trump’s July 4th Rally Is A Lot Bigger Than You Think, our redoubtable editor Ursula Faw noted:
Trump’s Ohio rally [was] less than stellar. Droves of MAGAs were trailing out, going home early, because apparently the old Trump magic is gone.
They left in droves alright – there’s video!
Exclusive: We sent @waltermasterson to yesterday’s Trump rally in Ohio, and he spotted bored MAGAs leaving in droves during the speech. More to come. pic.twitter.com/yvbTNunZ0B
— PatriotTakes ?? (@patriottakes) June 27, 2021
Ursula’s article continues,
They came to see him mainline hate and rage and gin up the crowd into a frenzy. Instead, they got a tired laundry list recitation of his grievances. One MAGA said it wasn’t “radical” enough for him.
In Walter Masterson’s TicTok report for Meidas Touch and Patriot Takes, the MAGA fan he interviewed said, “I was hoping it would be a little more radical. I just want him to talk about more like the election fraud. I feel like he didn’t get into it.”
So who is getting into it these days with the really radical propaganda? That would be QAnon. As Trump’s cheap plastic star fades and the former-faithful drift off into the sunset, the Q-cult is gaining followers, sucking up the fanatics in the former guy’s wake.
QAnon has been sloshing around in the fringes of social media for several years until 2020 when the onset of the pandemic provided ideal conditions for explosive expansion. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks extremism and online disinformation, found that the membership of Facebook QAnon groups surged by 120% and engagement with those pages increased by 91% in March 2020. AZ Mirror reported:
Other researchers and journalists tracking QAnon have documented massive growth throughout the Spring and Summer. Marc-André Argentino, a PhD candidate at Concordia University who researches extremism, saw the number of QAnon Facebook groups increase from 60 in early March to 179 by July, with their membership spiking from 213,000 to 1.4 million. Likewise, he found that the number of “likes” on QAnon pages during the same time climbed from 400,000 to more than 900,000.
The Q-cult’s permutable beliefs absorbed the Trumpian alternate reality like a sponge and soaked up the MAGA fanatics that came with it. That trend did not escape the media. The New York Times reported:
Mr. Trump himself has avoided saying much about QAnon, but when he was pressed to denounce the theory while in office, he refused. At a news conference last year, he seemed to indicate that he was pleased by QAnon followers’ fondness for him. “I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” he said, adding that “the movement” was “gaining in popularity.”
Ironically, Trump failed to see that QAnon’s gain would challenge his own popularity and outrival him.
Ursula Faw noted that the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park commission cancelled Trump’s July 4th rally after the Ohio flop and surmised,
If you’ve been following politics for longer than five minutes, this has all the earmarks of a facile decision made for reasons other than the ones stated. And what might those reasons be? How about Trump’s rally in Ohio was less than a humdinger?
Considering that July 4th is one of the biggest holiday events on the American calendar, the Park commission must have blanched when they saw how small the Ohio rally crowd was. The mass desertions that began half an hour into Trump’s 90-minute speech, must have sent them into a blind panic. The last thing they’d want on July 4th is an absolute fizzer.
There’s considerable schadenfreude in discovering that, while Trump sulked and pouted in Mar-a-Lago for five months, the QAnon movement was surpassing him in popularity. Worse, from Trump’s point of view, they did it with the likes of Sidney Whacko Powell, Mike Traitor Flynn and knucklehead Lindell leading their rallies.
When that realisation finally dawns on Trump, the narcissistic reaction will be nothing short of volcanic fury — and you can bet none of the various Qs ever predicted that.
I understand QAnon is making inroads into the “wellness” crowd.
That sounds interesting. Please tell me more about the “wellness” crowd so I can look out for it.
Ding dong bell, the well took a dump
Who pur it there? Little Donnie Trump
I would imagine it’s the folks who think herbs, doTerra essences, CrossFit, etc. The ones who take the essences are the real idiots since the “science” behind taking them in the first place was disproven long ago.
The Delta variant seems to not give a happy rat’s a*s how young and healthy you are-if you’re not vaccinated, you might just be toast.
I admit they were the group I immediately thought of when I saw the term “wellness crowd”. 🙂
As we get into mid evening and I have a chance to reflect on today I can’t help but think of Trump’s (planned to be) news dominating border event. Trumpty-Dumpty continued to have a bad week. Today, when he thought he’d be getting major “bigly” attention what happened? Well, serial rapist Bill Cosby got a pass from the PA Supreme Court and got his conviction overturned. He was home hours later. Donald Rumsfeld died. And news broke that FL Gov. and would be Trump replacement Ron DeSantis and his crew are in a pissing contest with Trump over an event Sat. near the condo that collapsed – they want Trump to stand down and Trump is saying no way, and that he’s by god going to air some more grievances. All this on top of the continued airing of people walking out of his OH event long before it was over with. And follow up reporting of his AL 4th of July event venue pulling the plug on him.
And for good measure the House passed the resolution establishing a Select Committee to investigate Jan. 6.
Trump thought he’d be getting all the attention today and he was a minor sideshow in the news! His ego has got to be in epic meltdown mode tonight. It will be even worse tomorrow with all the huge goings on in news that matters, and pretty much any mentions of him will be in regard to the expected tastelessness of him doing another round of whining a stone’s throw from where close to a hundred and fifty bodies are being recovered from the collapse of that condo. And his “grand 4th of July ‘spectacular'” fizzling like a wet firecracker.
As I say sometimes, I take my entertainment where I can find it and I’m getting a fair amount from Trump’s humiliation tonight. (And anticipating more negative mentions of him tomorrow if reporting that his pal Weiselberg will be indicted)
Schadenfreude is my favorite new word too.
It’s a wonderful word and a wonderful feeling!
Interesting thoughts, thank you for writing this up.
Ironically, (No Michelle increasingly demented Trump cannot ‘see’ or understand anything now.. and no he doesn’t know he us I’ll .. demented never do ..luckily I guess. Only close family and associates know it.) Trump failed to see that QAnon’s gain would challenge his own popularity and outrival him.