Trump should hold more rallies. Excuse me, “peaceful protests.”
Those who aren’t obsessed with the possibility of dying need to get busy living. For his part, President Trump needs to get busy winning.
This election will be a close one despite Biden’s many obvious infirmities, lack of motivated supporters, and dearth of campaign events. When you have America’s billionaire donor class and every media apparatchik in the country trying to shove you into the presidency, you don’t need to form coherent sentences to have a fighting chance of taking office.
Trump’s greatest assets against his enemies are tweets and rallies. Twitter gives Trump straight-line access to the people, unfiltered by our corrupt corporate media. But this is only half the battle. On Twitter, Trump can’t really see his supporters. Social media, whatever its uses, is fundamentally an abstraction.
This is why Trump needs rallies. He needs to escape from D.C. and see the good people of America’s heartland—and not just in piecemeal limited events either. His supporters need to gather. They need unfiltered, no-teleprompter Trump. They need to hear the hallmark chants of “USA! USA! USA!” They need the president’s mockery of our corporate press, and the off-the-cuff humor and storytelling.
Nothing would do more for the morale of Trump’s voters (and therefore his poll numbers) than seeing the man himself. Of course our lying liberal media would hate every second of it.
Wonderful.
The Trump campaign should hold these events without any restrictions, required masks, or weird rules meant to “protect” attendees from the virus. Americans should be allowed to judge for themselves whether to have community and political life. If he really wants to tweak the liberal schoolmarms, Trump should call these campaign rallies the “Peaceful Protest Tour” against intrusive government regulations and media-generated fear.
He should hold these rallies in little towns and rural venues where Americans are still sane. They should also be first-come, first-served. Online ticketing can be compromised by “Tik Tok Teens,” “K-pop Stans,” and Biden Bots. It isn’t necessary.
Trump already made an attempt to restart rallies back in June but met immediate and fierce resistance from the media and medical establishment. The “experts” began hyperventilating even more than usual. The rally was supposed to be a super-spreader event. It was responsible, local health officials claimed, for a “surge” in cases. On July 24, a local health official breathlessly reported that one man who needed a hospital bed in Tulsa for COVID-19 couldn’t get one all day because hospitals were being overwhelmed!
All lies.
According to the Tulsa Health Department’s COVID dashboard, the “surge” in cases in Tulsa began two weeks before the rally. This surge in positive tests was not accompanied by a spike in deaths. This is, by now, a familiar story.
The article whose headline alleged that a patient was turned away from Tulsa hospitals due to overwhelming demand also includes a few random acts of journalism buried deep in the story. That same article quoted Tulsa’s Interim Health Commissioner, Dr. Lance Frye, who said the city had “not identified a situation in which a hospital is operating at maximum capacity due to the COVID-19 pandemic” and that hospitals had the resources they needed. Another health official reported that ICUs in Tulsa were only 80 percent full. On July 24, the state’s executive report on COVID-19 medical capacity noted that 17 percent of ICU beds statewide were available and 66 percent of their ventilators were free.
For context, Tulsa has lost 107 citizens to COVID-19 out of a population of 650,000. It’s worth noting 6,100 Tulsans die every year from all causes.
Normal people know that’s not an apocalypse.
Journalists are not normal people. America’s vindictive and partisan corporate media decided to pin blame on Trump for deaths regardless of the facts. On July 30, Reuters tweeted that “Herman Cain, ex-presidential candidate who refused to wear mask, dies after COVID-19 diagnosis.” The insinuation from Reuters, the New York Times, and others was that Cain’s death was caused by visiting the Trump rally in Tulsa. There is no evidence this was the case. Cain’s spokesman, Dan Calabrese, noted that he had traveled a great deal the week before the rally.
Even if Cain had gotten the illness at the rally, it doesn’t matter. He was an adult and a free man. He decided that living his life without restrictions was more important than trying to mitigate every potential risk. And as a stage IV cancer survivor, Cain had to be more aware of the risks than most people. That is the same choice every American makes every time they leave their front door and get behind a steering wheel.
Peaceful assembly is an essential activity. Six months into this “global pandemic” the dangers of COVID-19 are well known. A small percentage of the population, with a median age of 80, dies from the illness. Most who contract it have unremarkable symptoms. The illness is a known risk, not a death sentence.
Those of us who are willing to accept those risks in the name of liberty have every right to do so. It is time for Americans to see their president in person. It is time for Trump to start holding rallies again.