Forget his difficulties with getting funding for his beloved wall. Forget his failure to repeal Obamacare. Forget the fact that he has had to reverse himself and commit to an indefinite war in Afghanistan. What Donald Trump really, really cares about is that he be able to command large crowds of adoring fans at will to stoke his ego that people love him, they really, really love him. This is the main reason that he is having campaign rallies almost from the time he took office where he can regale his followers with an imaginary reality. He even bragged about the size of the crowd that came when he visited the areas stricken by Hurricane Harvey.
But it turns out that his ability to get large crowds to attend his rallies may be waning. The size of the crowd at the rally in Phoenix last week was less than overwhelming and in typical Trump fashion, he is blaming others for it, firing his long-time advance man.
Donald Trump was in a bad mood before he emerged for a confrontational speech in Arizona last week.
TV and social media coverage showed that the site of his campaign rally, the Phoenix Convention Center, was less than full. Backstage, waiting in a room with a television monitor, Trump was displeased, one person familiar with the incident said: TV optics and crowd sizes are extremely important to the president.
As his surrogates warmed up the audience, the expanse of shiny concrete eventually filled in with cheering Trump fans. But it was too late for a longtime Trump aide, George Gigicos, the former White House director of advance who had organized the event as a contractor to the Republican National Committee. Trump later had his top security aide, Keith Schiller, inform Gigicos that he’d never manage a Trump rally again, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Gigicos, one of the four longest-serving political aides to the president, declined to comment.
It is hardly the case that Gigicos was the reason for the poor attendance. Even the most loyal supporters are going to tire of hearing the same old rhetoric over and over again. His claims of how he is ‘winning’ are sounding increasingly hollow. What is Trump, with his highly fragile ego, going to do when his next rallies continue to show declining attendance?
One curious feature about this firing is something that I have noted before and that is that Trump seems to always get someone else to do the firing, even when the person being fired is high profile or close to him. FBI director James Comey was informed in a note that was delivered by Trump’s security chief and Steve Bannon was fired by Trump’s chief of staff. Despite his TV persona that relished firing people to their faces, in real life Trump seems to cringe from directly dealing with such situations.
Just another example of how people who talk tough are often unable to personally deal with conflict.
On crowd sizes, the brilliant Confounds the Science observes:
blf,
That really was brilliant. Thanks!
I’m surprised his people aren’t hiring extras. They probably would except it would leak.
Perhaps they could just round up some appreciative cattle.
Marcus @3:
It wouldn’t matter much if it leaked. His True Believers™ would just say that it is “fake news”. After all, the real hired extras are the ones at the liberal rallies (hired by Soros, of course).
You linked to his Annaville fire station press-friendly emergency responders’ meeting. The media pool obligingly film him attempting to show how organised everything in Texas is. But look again: the images of DonnyJohnny standing on a fire engine looked … let’s be honest: impromptu, and badly rushed.
The images show two rooftop snipers behind him, two fire trucks pulled across in front of him, two secret service suburbans in front of that. The cameras are about 20m away, no-one’s even ready to let the media pool take a sound feed or even put a microphone next to the loudspeakers, and the crowds are held back on the opposite side of the road >40m away where they can only see an orange head and a hat with a “45” logo. The protection team had obviously insisted on keeping the president safe from firearms and vehicles, but holding a proper photocall rally was never planned in advance.
I imagine the president saw the Tea Party activists outside with their rally-style placards at the ready, so he insisted on speaking to his faithful, and the secret service couldn’t say no.
When he talks up the coordination, the planning and the emergency response, you know that none of it is down to him and his team.
WHAT? It’s like you’re suggesting reality TV shows like The Apprentice aren’t actually, you know, real! 😮 🙂