I received some significant blowback last week when I (accurately) reported that Donald Trump’s rally in Mobile drew at most 20,000 people and that Trump’s speech was so bad that it actually seemed to turn off some former fans. Well, here is Ashley Trice, editor of Mobile’s Lagniappe weekly, in her column out yesterday:
There were certainly not 40,000 people there. Or 30,000, as the Trump campaign claimed. Not even close. Though you couldn’t tell it from some of the shots seen on television or splashed all over the web, more than half of the stadium was empty. Even the “official” total from the city of 20,000 seemed quite generous, which, don’t get me wrong, is still a lot…. His long, disjointed, braggadocious “speech,” if you can call it that, at Ladd was more akin to listening to your senile ol’ grandpa ramble on from his naugahyde recliner on a Sunday afternoon than someone actually laying out a thoughtful plan to “make” America great again. And watching the thousands assembled listen to him, I don’t think he captured or inspired them one bit. If anything, he lost people he had. As he blathered on about Oreos and Billy Graham and Secretariat and self-aggrandized and self-aggrandized some more, by the end the crowd looked plain bored…. And this is why Trump will ultimately fade away. You can only go to the circus so many times before even the most entertaining elephant starts making you yawn.
Then there is the Mod Mobilian, a right-leaning online publication. It also panned Trump:
… it just wasn’t the experience I’d come prepared for….Friday night’s display certainly qualifies as theater, and it sure came across as amateur…. A pep rally needs some pep. [For example;]… You can’t fly a 757 over the crowd as a warm-up and then give them nothing but an hour of rambling, crazy-uncle style extemporaneous monologue….Warning signs you’re losing your audience: they don’t respond to laugh lines. They don’t respond to applause lines. Some of them head for the exits in the middle of the performance. And most importantly, they fail to cheer and applaud at the end.
Trump is a joke. He ought to be fired.