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Showing Original Post only (View all)I Listened to All Six Trump Rallies in October. You Should, Too [View all]
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/i-listened-to-all-six-trump-rallies-in-october-you-should-tooLetter from Trumps Washington
I Listened to All Six Trump Rallies in October. You Should, Too
Its not a reality show. Its real.
By Susan B. Glasser
5:00 A.M.
Im still watching the Presidents rallies, because his wordsradical, dangerous, and often untrueare still the best way to understand him.
snip//
The biggest difference between Trump and any other American President, however, is not the bragging. Its the cult of personality he has built around himself and which he insists upon at his rallies. Political leaders are called onstage to praise the President in terms that would make a feudal courtier blush, and theyre not empty words. These are the kinds of tributes I have heard in places like Uzbekistan, but never before in America. Is he not the best President we have ever had? the Mississippi senator Cindy Hyde-Smith enthused. (Trump then praised her for voting with me one hundred per cent of the time.) In Erie on Wednesday, a Republican congressman, Michael Kelly, gave the most sycophantic speech of the ones I listened to this month. Trump, he yelled to the crowd, is the strongest President we have seen in our lifetime. Addressing Trump, he said, You are the best! You are the best! Trump did not need to leave his luxurious life behind for the indignities of political combat, but he did. I am so grateful, Kelly concluded, that an American citizen came out of nowhere to take the reins and reform and retake this nation.
No wonder his followers think this way. In Trumps telling at these rallies, he is the hero of every story. All ideas, big or small, flow through him now that he is President. He personally ordered the Ambassador in Israel to renovate a building for the new American Embassy there using beautiful Jerusalem stone. (Never mind that all buildings in the city are required to be faced with it.) He had the greatest idea to get veterans better medical care by allowing them to go to private doctors, confounding the experts who told him, Sir, weve been working on this for forty-four years, and couldnt fix the problem. Same with an N.F.L. dispute with Canada. Nobody could get it done, Trump said. I did it in two minutes.
Then there are the stunners that we already know Trump thinks are true. But listen to them for almost seven hours in an election season, and remember, this is the President; maybe we shouldnt just screen this out, or pretend it doesnt matter. Every single rally included multiple attacks on the media and fake news. In Mississippi, the press bashing began seconds into the speech; in Pennsylvania, it took seven minutes; in Minnesota, ten. Deadbeat allies, rapacious foreigners ripping us off, and murderous gang members from MS-13 also figured in every one of the speeches.
snip//
Much of the coverage of these events tends to be theatre criticism, or news stories about a single inflammatory line or two, rating Trumps performance or puzzling over the appeal to his followers. But what the President of the United States is actually saying is extraordinary, regardless of whether the television cameras are carrying it live. Its not just the whoppers or the particular outrage riffs that do get covered, either. Its the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats arent just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Trump and Trump alone stands between his audiences and disaster.
I listen because I think we are making a mistake by dismissing him, by pretending the words of the most powerful man in the world are meaningless. They do have consequences. They are many, and they are worrisome. In what he says to the world, the President is, as Ed Luce wrote in the Financial Times this week, creating the space to do things which were recently unthinkable. Its not a reality show; its real.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/i-listened-to-all-six-trump-rallies-in-october-you-should-too
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I Listened to All Six Trump Rallies in October. You Should, Too [View all]
babylonsister
Oct 2018
OP
It's the political equivalent of evangelicals testifying about being saved by their gawd
malaise
Oct 2018
#1
Thanks for the info. I did not know that the Feds had intercepted info. prior to his death (assumed
riversedge
Oct 2018
#52
not just creating the space to do the unthinkable, actually doing the unthinkable
EleanorR
Oct 2018
#3
actually, he's channelling 1500 radio stations, that's why he has any standing at all, and those
certainot
Oct 2018
#29
Sorry I can't stand to listen to his voice let alone watch him - he disgusts me. I'll read articles
iluvtennis
Oct 2018
#19
I can't bear to watch him, but it is absolutely necessary that someone should document & analyze...
Hekate
Oct 2018
#23
Rep Kelly: "retake this nation" back from people of color & women he means, back fr Obama & Hillary
Bernardo de La Paz
Oct 2018
#28
..bleak and threatening world view...accompanied by an increasingly grandiose rewriting of history
mia
Oct 2018
#31