"The Emperor Has No Crowd"

“Donald Trump declared ‘the silent majority is stronger than ever before’ at his comeback rally on Saturday, but thousands of empty seats appeared to tell a different story. Trump’s much hyped return to the campaign trail turned to humiliation when he failed to fill a 19,000-capacity arena in the Republican stronghold of Oklahoma, raising fresh doubts about his chances of winning re-election. ‘The Emperor has no crowd,’ tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama.

“The overwhelmingly white gathering at Trump’s first rally since March was dwarfed by the huge multiracial crowds that have marched for Black Lives Matter across the country in recent weeks, reinforcing criticism that the president is badly out of step with the national mood. The flop in Tulsa was an unexpected anticlimax for an event that seemed to offer a combustible mix of Trump, protests over racial injustice and a coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 120,000 Americans and put more than 40m out of work…

“The low turnout will be a blow to Trump, whose campaign reportedly saw it as a way to revive his flagging spirits amid slumping poll numbers. Trump had said last Monday: ‘We’ve never had an empty seat. And we certainly won’t in Oklahoma.’ But confronted by empty seats that may prove more telling than any opinion poll, Trump hailed his supporters as ‘warriors’ and blamed protesters for the poor turnout: ‘We had some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things.’ He also described them as a ‘bunch of maniacs.’

“The Trump campaign separately claimed that protesters interfered with the president’s supporters, even blocking access to the metal detectors, which prevented people from entering the rally. But multiple reporters on the ground saw no evidence of this. Rallies are Trump’s lifeblood. As usual, this one ended with the Rolling Stones’ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’” (The Guardian).