Trump’s
Reckless, Atrocious, Deceitful Rally
The spittle was flying. So were the lies.
by TIM
MILLER
SEPTEMBER 14,
2020 5:30 AM
President Trump
attempted to hold an unmasked, indoor superspreader event in Henderson, Nevada
on Sunday night, running afoul of Nevada regulations and his own
administration’s guidelines. (Due to meager turn out, I have taken the liberty
to downgrade it to a Category 3 minispreader.) This was Trump’s first indoor
rally since the Tulsa disaster that cost Brad Parscale his
job and after which Herman Cain lost his life.
This latest
public-health monstrosity event came on the heels of the president, at a
separate maskless gathering earlier in the weekend, mocking his opponent Joe Biden for having
followed responsible social-distancing protocols.
I tuned in last night
because the president’s brazenness in the face of this obvious public health
threat was a curiosity for me. Weren’t we told that he was a germophobe? And
didn’t he admit to Bob Woodward that he knew the
virus was airborne? So shouldn’t the screaming plebes freak him out a bit? Was
the germophobe bit also a lie? Maybe he just didn’t like it when people of
color touched him? Or has his narcissism and deep-seated desire to downplay the
virus overwhelmed his germophobia?
While I wasn’t delivered
any answers on this point, I was reminded about just how absolutely jarring it
is that this man is ostensibly at the helm of our government in these trying
times.
For those who have been
beaten down by the Trumpian disaster porn, rallies such as this don’t really
make a mark any longer. The cable networks and even the three C-SPANs landed
on the BORRRRING side of the ledger: None of them chose to air the event. And
for political junkies and Trump-watchers, these rallies increasingly have the
feel of a boring nostalgia act
with a lead singer halfheartedly crooning his old hits. And there’s something
to be said for that.
But it is important to
take a moment to shake yourself free from the blunting effect of the orange
Trumpian film that has subsumed our daily lives (and here in northern
California, our atmosphere). Seen with fresh eyes, the Henderson rally was
truly a shocking and unimaginably wheels-off undertaking given that it came
amid a pandemic that is still killing a thousand Americans a day and with
wildfires making much of the West Coast uninhabitable.
And so over the course
of the president’s interminable harangue, I began to jot down the moments that
stood out, beginning with his foray into the insane
#Obamagate conspiracy. As Trump began a side-bar about Obama
supposedly being caught spying on him, he eyed an attendee who was beginning a
“Lock Him Up” chant. He then egged on the overwhelmingly unmasked crowd into a
frenzy in which they projected airborne spittle throughout the building in an
attempt to will to life the fantasy that their wannabe strongman president
might jail his predecessor, the first black president, for an imaginary crime.
This was not the only
coronavirus projectile laden with racial invective emitted by the attendees.
Following the removal of a protester—presumably a Black Lives Matter activist,
although it wasn’t clear from the video—the crowd began bellowing that
oh-so-clever parlay: All Lives Matter. All Lives Matter.
(At this point it should
be noted that the CDC recommends a good way to lessen your coronavirus risk is
to avoid gatherings with singing or shouting. If you are going to be in
such a location, they recommend a mask.)
In addition to basking
in the two racist chants, the president said that his opponent is a Communist (“c-word”)
who would eliminate the suburbs and allow anarchists to burn down Hispanic
businesses. He fabricated a charge about the Democratic governor of Nevada
tampering with ballots, declared that football is “boring as hell,” made fun of
Chris Cuomo’s ratings, “joked” about running for a third term, and said flag
burners should go to jail for one year. He shouted “I love the Hispanics,” lied
about what was said at the DNC, reintroduced the bigoted dog-whistle use of and
exaggerated emphasis on the middle name of Barack Hussein Obama
(which he had told Bob Woodward he only does in private), said that NASA was
almost closed before he got into office and had grass growing on the runways
(?), and he once again implied support for extrajudicial killings by
U.S. marshals. The only time he acknowledged that his campaign event was
running afoul of state regs was when he ambiguously implied that he would help attendees if
the governor comes after them. He never recommended that the attendees take any
health precautions, despite the advance team building in a nice six-foot bubble between him and his fans.
Nevada Governor Steve
Sisolak rightly and responsibly took Trump to task for his insanely
reckless behavior in holding the rally at all.
But it is easy for those
who cover the politics of this to let that slip into a tit-for-tat between two
political actors fighting over pandemic politics in an election year.
This event was so much
worse than that.
Everything about it was
fucking appalling.
In fact it was so
appalling that it would stand out as the single most appalling and reckless political
event hosted by any presidential nominee in my lifetime before yesterday by a
long shot, if you just didn’t count anything else that Donald Trump did.
And that’s the problem.
Somewhere along the way he removed many people’s ability to be appalled. We
have become numbed. Too many regional news outlets either won’t cover the event
at all or will have headlines like “Donald Trump Makes Appeal to Hispanics At
Nevada Rally.” The national Democrats will let Gov. Sisolak get in his licks,
but otherwise move onto something else.
Just because we have
become immune to his behavior doesn’t mean it should be treated as if it is one
side of a two-sided coin. Just because he lies so cavalierly doesn’t mean he
should be allowed to get away with it. Just because his oh-so-unsubtle
race-baiting is part and parcel of his presidency doesn’t mean we should just
let All Lives Matter chants pass by the wayside. Just because we have become
bored by our #takes and have run out of new and clever angles for analyzing our
malign president doesn’t mean we should say nothing at all.
All the president’s
grotesqueries matter. This is just the latest.
