Greg Sargent has a terrific column today about Trump greatest fear: small crowds.
Two new reports — one from NBC News, and one from the Associated Press — shed light on an internal debate now underway among Trump advisers about how to manage both this new reality and Trump’s own emotional struggle with it.
The picture that emerges is one in which they are working to balance Trump’s insatiable need to feed off adoring crowds against the reality that people might be disinclined to brave the plague conditions that he did so much to unleash on the country. The imperatives of satiating Trump’s megalomania are bumping up against the consequences of his depravity and incompetence.
Trump is set to hold a rally in New Hampshire — originally scheduled for this weekend, it has now been postponed — and as NBC reports, his advisers are desperate to avoid a repeat of the lackluster turnout at his Oklahoma gathering. As one puts it: “We can’t have a repeat of Tulsa.”
What’s changed is that Trump now realizes why the Tulsa fiasco happened: A White House official tells NBC that Trump “sees now” that supporters may not turn out at rallies due to coronavirus fears.
It’s galling that Trump only sees this now, since experts loudly warned against rallies, and one of his paramount goals was to create the illusion of normalcy, so everyone would get back to work and the economy would roar back to greatness on Trump’s reelection schedule.
So the New Hampshire rally will be held outdoors, and masks will be strongly encouraged, though not mandated. Meanwhile, Trump continues urging a recklessly rapid reopening while refusing to set a mask-wearing example himself.
Yet Trump’s advisers also know that future rallies create the risk of more lackluster appearances. But they’re going to brave that risk, and the Associated Press reports on why: Despite the risks, the Trump campaign believes it needs to return to the road, both to animate the president, who draws energy from his crowds, and to inject life into a campaign that is facing a strong challenge from Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
The problem is that at a time when coronavirus cases are spiking to record levels in many states and nationally, Trump nonetheless wants and needs big crowds.
Trump himself unwittingly laid bare the dynamic in an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday night.
“We’re doing very well in the polls,” Trump declared, when in fact his approval numbers are 15 points underwater and he’s trailing Biden nationally by 10 points. Both metrics have gotten worse over the last few weeks, but Trump insisted: “We’re rapidly rising.”
“There’s great spirit,” Trump continued. “Spirit like nobody’s ever seen before, actually. And there’s no spirit for Joe.”
As the constant lying about polls demonstrates, for Trump the impression that he’s losing — that his energy and candidacy are flagging, that the crowds aren’t showing up — is itself deadly. What must be relentlessly manufactured is the illusion that he remains enormously popular and that Trump’s America is energized and primed and ready to win again.
Greg has hit on something very important. Trump’s psyche will fracture if he can no longer manufacture the illusion of popularity., particularly at a time when the polls are showing him cratering. It’s everything to him:
Trump has obsessed over his crowd sizes throughout his presidency. Indeed, the ability to create imagery like this is why he held rallies in off-years like 2019 in the first place:
This obsession goes back many years. In his biography of Trump, journalist Timothy O’Brien recounts an exchange between Trump and producer Lorne Michaels, in which Trump acknowledges his NBC project might not attract a big audience forever:
“You know, Lorne, it won’t always be this way,” Donald mused. “Someday NBC will call me and say, ‘Donald, the ratings are no good and we are going to have to cancel.’”“No, Donald, there is only one difference,” Michaels replied. “They won’t even call.”
That exchange remained with Trump for years, O’Brien reports.
“Trump’s biggest existential fear is that the spotlight will be turned off, the seats will be empty, and his phone will stop ringing,” O’Brien told me. “If the ratings drop, he drops.”
“There isn’t any part of his life that hasn’t been touched by this,” O’Brien continued. “His obsession with newspaper and TV coverage in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s; how many people show up at his rallies; how he’s performing in the polls. It’s always there.”
The idea that they canceled the rally tomorrow because it might rain in the middle of July because is absurd. Trump has held dozens of rallies in which his ecstatic cult waited in extreme inclement weather to see him. I think they’ve had a tepid response and they don’t want to chance another Tulsa. Trump’s fragile emotional state just can’t handle it.
from the Washington Post on that subject. The whiny little man-baby is even starting to get on his loyal henchmen’s nerves:
Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.
Trump has always exhibited a healthy ego and his self-victimization tendencies are not a new phenomenon, according to those who have known him over the years. But those characteristics have been especially pronounced this summer, revealing themselves almost daily in everything from private conversations to public tweets as the pandemic continues to upend daily life across America and threaten the president’s political fortunes.
Barbara Res, a former executive at the Trump Organization, said that when she worked for Trump, he interpreted nearly everything in deeply personal terms. “Whatever bad happened, no matter what it was, it was always against him, always directed at him,” Res said. “He would say, ‘Why does everything always happen to me?’ ” She added: “It was as if the world revolved around him. Everything that happened had an effect on him, good or bad.”
Now, however, Trump’s sense of victimhood strikes even some allies as particularly incongruous considering the devastation wrought by the pandemic and the pain and anguish apparent in Black Lives Matter protests.
[…]
They even brought the toddler some big trucks!
Other top White House advisers — including Hope Hicks and Dan Scavino — have also sought to buttress Trump’s mood with events they thought he would enjoy, such as celebrating truckers by bringing 18-wheelers onto the White House South Lawn in mid-April or creating social media videos that feature throngs of his adoring fans, according to aides.
They should just give him a bottle and put him to bed. The article reports on numerous outside advisers and confidantes saying that he never stops whining about his plight and he seems low energy and depressed.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and author of the forthcoming book, “Strongmen,” a history of authoritarian leaders, said Trump’s victimization complex fits a pattern of authoritarian leaders past and present.
“They have no empathy, and they only see the world through how things affect them personally,” Ben-Ghiat said. “They’re not there to govern. They’re there to enrich themselves, they’re there to plunder the nation, and they’re there to be world historical.”
Sounds like Trumpie. But never let it be said that he’s mired in depression. There’s always his magical thinking to bail him out:
The president’s mood had also improved as he focused on the fight over whether to rename or tear down statues named after Confederate generals and other controversial historical figures. Aides say he believes a battle over such symbols will help him politically.
Despite his bouts of moroseness, Trump can also exhibit optimism not entirely grounded in reality. He has continued to tell advisers, for instance, that he is certain the virus will go away by October and that there will be a “cure” by then — a word he favors over “vaccine.”
Then, he adds in these tellings, the economy will rebound overnight and he will win a second term.
Like all toddlers, he loves fairy tales.