The Oklahoma Supreme Court just rejected an effort to block the rally that Trump will hold tomorrow for 19,000 people in Tulsa.
The court said that the state’s June 1 reopening plan allowed business owners to use discretion over social distancing measures, and they were not mandatory as the plaintiffs had asserted.
Paul Waldman of the Washington Post expresses the reasons that Trump’s return to mass rallies is so ominous, even historic.
President Trump’s first rally since the pandemic began takes place in Tulsa this Saturday, and while the content is predictable — an interminable stream-of-consciousness rant about the insufficiently worshipful news media, fake polls, aides who have betrayed him, and anyone else who happens to have aroused his ire that day — this rally will be something special.
So much of the disastrous chaos of this moment in American history is compressed into this one gathering that when the history of this presidency is written, the Tulsa rally may be the one we remember more than any other.
The first reason is that the rally is happening at all when we are still in the midst of a pandemic. The Trump campaign chose Oklahoma not because it’s a swing state (he won there in 2016 by a 36-point margin) but because it’s friendly territory. But like many states where Republican leaders have been eager to remove social distancing restrictions, Oklahoma is experiencing a dramatic spike in covid-19 cases.
Into that environment, Trump will be packing a 19,000-seat indoor arena with people shouting and chanting and breathing in a cloud of each other’s droplets.
The danger of a mass infection would be reduced if everyone wore a mask, but as we well know by now, Trump and his supporters have decided that doing so is a sign of weakness and insufficient devotion to the president. While the campaign will be handing out masks, it would be a shock if 1 out of 10 attendees wore them.
Thinking ahead, the Trump campaign decided to make everyone who attends sign a release promising not to sue the campaign if they contract the virus at the rally. Precisely no one will be surprised if, as a result of this event, hundreds or even thousands more people are infected.
The rally was originally scheduled for Juneteenth, the day celebrating the end of slavery, by a president who has of late been standing up for the Confederacy. Trump did bow to public horror and delay the rally by a day. But afterward — having almost certainly just learned of the existence of Juneteenth — he claimed, “I made Juneteenth very famous,” adding that “nobody had ever heard of it.”
Add to that the fact that 99 years ago Tulsa was the site of one of the worst racist massacres in American history, when whites rampaged through the district known as “Black Wall Street,” killing hundreds of people. It’s almost as if the Trump campaign picked the time and place to be as antagonistic and divisive as possible, precisely at a moment when protests against racism and police brutality have swept the nation. Tensions are already running high.
While many Trump rallies feature confrontations between his supporters and opponents, this one may be particularly dangerous. The city of Tulsa imposed a curfew in the nights leading up to the rally, fearing violence ahead of Trump’s arrival….
So to sum up: Trump is holding his first mid-pandemic rally in a place and at a time guaranteed to make people angry and upset. He’s coming to a state fast becoming a coronavirus hotspot, putting on a rally almost certain to spread covid-19. In advance of the event, he’s ratcheting up tensions and threatening violence against peaceful protesters.
All that’s left is for Trump to rant and rave in ways that are alternately appalling and nonsensical, putting on another vulgar performance that reminds us all why his presence in the most powerful office on earth is so odious.
[
it looks like Trump is threatening anyone who protests his ego rally in Tulsa.
“Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “It will be a much different scene!”
Fear not Tulsa. Michael Bloomberg is going to save the city!
The Road to Racial Justice Runs Through Tulsa
America needs to reckon with its racism through concrete action on this Juneteenth.
When my campaign ended in March, I was not willing to walk away from the principles behind our Greenwood Initiative. They are too important. And so Bloomberg Philanthropies hired campaign staff members who developed the initiative to explore ways we could bring some of its ideas to life through our foundation. We are focusing on three main areas where racial equity is so lacking: financial equity, including housing and small-business ownership; social equity, including access to quality and affordable education, and strengthening historically Black colleges and universities; and civic equity, including voter rights and access to the ballot.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-19/mike-bloomberg-road-to-racial-justice-runs-through-tulsa
There are reports of a complete sellout of the rally as well as another event outside to accomodate the overflow. How much is hype will be known tomorrow.
Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, claimed on Friday that over 800,000 people registered for tickets, calling it the “biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x.”
And on Monday morning, Trump tweeted, “almost One Million people request tickets for the Saturday Night Rally in Tulsa,” despite the venue seating just over 19,000.
In my most snarky mood, I won’t know what to hope for. CBK (Did I write that?)
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump called coronavirus testing “overrated.”
But not so overrated that everyone who meets with him is required to have a corona virus test beforehand, apparently.
I feel sorry for the famiies of thse people who wil become infected by these science averse nut-cases…but I hope they pay dearly for this travesty.
The virus only attacks blue states and will not harm conservative Christians and Evangelicals who have a deep faith. The rest of us are just a bunch of useless COVID magnets.
Didn’t you know that?
We have to wonder who is going pay for the clean up the mess being created by the fools attending this rally. Tulsa taxpayers will pick up the bill. Trump and his campaign will not. Never happen. How much of the human waste products will be left behind invade the environment around the arena? And I mean human bodily waste filled with the virus. I truly feel sorry for the families when the attendees return home. This is a disaster happening.
I’ve never before hoped that people would get sick and die. Another norm the Idiot helped break.
Um, yes you have. Right here on this very blog.
Natural selection.
Bob: Your best snark yet. CBK
. . . Bob: did I write that? CBK
I seriously feel terrible for all the people in Oklahoma and around the country who will be infected by attendees at Moronfest 2020. It’s just awful. Alas, the Oklahoma Supreme Court didn’t see fit to protect these citizens.
Bob I know . . . me too, but it’s still all very snark-inducing. CBK
Let the blame fall where it belongs. The court can’t protect the people from the stupidity of the reopening plan set by their own elected reps, all they can do is interpret it. Governor – Mayor – these are the folks who could and should have had the courage to put the kibosh on it as soon as virus started spiking.
Oklahoma is having a spike
Exactly. Darwin at work.
Of course Trump says of Juneteenth “nobody had every heard of it” because he hadn’t heard of it before. He’s a malignant narcissist; to him the only real person in the world is himself, so if he hadn’t heard of it nobody had.
Trump: Who knew healthcare was so difficult? Lincoln was a Republican. Very few people know that. You can’t send astronauts to the sun or buy Greenland. Who knew?
Isn’t Finland part of Russia?
How about nuking hurricanes to stop them? OR, windmills cause cancer.
. . . and if we would just stop testing, the virus will go away. CBK
You should follow George Conway on Twitter, Kellyanne’s husband, who detests Trump. He often changes his bio. At one point he described himself as an investigator of the “root causes of the theory that windmills cause cancer.” When Trump called him “Moonface,” he added that to his bio. He is a leader of the Lincoln Project, a group of dissident Republicans who make anti-Trump ads and show them on FOX.
LOL!!!
This has to go on record as one of Trump’s more revealing gaffes.
This one is also quite revealing:
“He’s somebody who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”
Donald Trump talking about–wait for this–Frederick Douglass.
He has no idea who the fellow is, but he bs’s because, you know, Trump. Very like Trump talking about his “favorite book,” the Bible.
Heeheehee. I graduated hisch only 2 yrs after Trump, learned who Douglass was there. And remembered cuz I kept on, you know – reading – thereafter.
Don’t miss TRUMP CORONAFEST 2020!
Come for the racism!
Stay for the virus!
Music by Dyllan Roofie and the Proud Boys. Guest appearances by Quaalude McANinny, Emperor Palatine, and Voldemort.
And now for a few words from our event sponsors the Repugnican Party and the GRU!
Keep America Grating!
Make sure to reserve your ICU bed and ventilator before attending.
cx: Palpatine, ofc
“Odious” and “vulgar,” nice choice of words .. maybe lots of business for contact tracers, remember 1:4:16:64 …Cuomo May be sending many ventilators to Oklahoma
exactly
Thanks for the info!
This is incredible. Trump doesn’t care at all that people will get sick and die from COVID-19 at his ego rally. How will this country ever progress when we have a leader who is this ignorant and only thinks about ‘getting the economy going’ so that he can be re-elected? Other countries who have this virus under control are laughing at the U.S.
Axios:
President Trump defended his decision to move ahead with a controversial large-scale Tulsa rally this weekend amid the pandemic, saying in an interview Friday with Axios that “we have to get back to living our lives” and “we’re going to have a wild evening tomorrow night at Oklahoma.”
Pressed on why he wasn’t using his presidential bully pulpit to encourage rally attendees to wear masks, Trump described masks as “a double-edged sword.” When asked if he recommended people wear them, he added: “I recommend people do what they want.”
“I don’t feel that I’m in danger,” he said. “I’ve met a lot, a lot of people, and so far here I sit.” (Everyone who meets with Trump, including this reporter, is tested beforehand.)
Trump says the rally in Oklahoma is part of a broader message that leaders have “got to open up our country” even as the pandemic continues.
“We have to get back to business. We have to get back to living our lives. Can’t do this any longer,” Trump said. “And I do believe it’s safe. I do believe it’s very safe.”
Trump will be very protected at the rally. I bet the social distance will be 100 feet between him and his fans.
The problem for him is that in the kind of indoor environment the BOK Center provides, it’s not enough to simply be six feet apart. The air is going to be saturated with droplets being moved about by the air handling system. There will be no safe place in that building, not even for Trump at his usual remove from the hoi polloi. The question is, if he turns up positive, will we even know unless he gets very symptomatic?
Stewart I thought Trump himself would “sit up and take notice” when Boris from England contracted the virus. . . . wrong again. Trump just keeps on pushing the envelop.
One commentator on the Trump side said that Trump’s fans would drive through a wall for him and that they were much more excited about their candidate than Biden supporters.
I wanted to tell him, that the difference is that Biden wouldn’t EXPECT his “fans” (supporters) to put themselves in danger for him–the opposite in fact. But the more general rule is that adolescent zealotry and extremism are always louder and, . . well, . . . more zealous . . . than reasonable caution purveyed by the “adults in the room.” CBK
Catherine King: Trump supporters, many but not all, think that having to wear a mask is stomping on their individual freedoms to decide what is best. They don’t think about how their behavior is destructive to everyone surrounding them. There is no sense of common good.
Their leader doesn’t care about them but they are too deep into a cult to realize that.
Trump’s press secretary said that she is going to the rally but won’t wear a mask. Maybe it will be ‘two down with ONE rally”. That would not bother me in the slightest. However, I do worry about innocent people who will encounter this mad group.
Sadly, anyone who is infected at the rally will spread the disease to people who did not attend. The event is evil.
Diane Evil . . . nothing less. CBK
carolmalaysia What you said . . . but I even worry about stupid people. (I need to quit that.)
I have a relative who won’t leave the thing alone. For her, everything is seen through a political lens–no matter what. If they don’t close abortion clinics but close churches, then its a liberal-atheist plot. If the restaurant requires masks except for when eating, it’s a liberal plot where they are trying to control their customers and take their rights away. But clinics (I said) have to do with health . . . but she is a Trumpist–so nothing sinks in.
As metaphor, Trump has been quite successful in building his “wall,” though it’s not on the border between the US and Mexico. CBK
Just because Trump & his racist cronies never heard of Juneteenth doesn’t mean that his claims that “nobody had ever heard of it ” or that he was the one who “made Juneteenth very famous” are true.
I learned about Junteenth in 1972, when I took a college course called “Racism in America.” I remember feeling horrified then, when I learned that Texans had decided to just not tell slaves that Lincoln had abolished slavery, over 2 years earlier, so the slaves didn’t find out they were free until two months after the Civil War ended.
I have always thought of Juneteenth not as a celebration of the end of slavery, but as a very sobering reminder that there are white Americans who would still be owning slaves today if they could get away with it. And, given his history of racism, belief in eugenics and defense of Confederate generals and symbols, my guess is that Trump would be one of them.
Doesn’t look like the Orange Virus was able to even fill the arena. The “million tickets” that had been given out never materialized. I’m sure Trump won’t like the headlines, especially the ones in two weeks that show people got infected and will die from his ego rally.
……………………………..
Trump makes defiant return to campaign stage amid controversies
06/20/20 09:56 PM EDT
Trump’s references to coronavirus were mostly light-hearted and made only a passing mention of the rising death toll.
The president said his handling of the virus has been “phenomenal.” He also referred to testing as a “double-edged sword” and quipped that he had instructed aides to “slow the testing down” to avoid identifying too many cases.
“It’s a disease, without question, has more names than any disease in history. I can name – Kung flu,” Trump said, using a racist nickname for the virus that causes COVID-19, which originated in China…”The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments, tear down our statues and punish cancel, and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control,” Trump said. “We’re not conforming. That’s why we’re here, actually.”…
The campaign boasted that more than 1 million tickets had been requested for the Tulsa event, an indication of the enthusiasm they felt was prevalent even if only a fraction of that actually attended in person.
The event attracted immense media coverage, but the images on the ground fell short of expectations set by the campaign and some of the headlines are likely to anger Trump…
Hours before the event started, the campaign announced that six staffers had tested positive for coronavirus after surrogates spent the week insisting it was safe for supporters.
Trump and Pence scrapped planned outdoor speeches after the overflow crowd near the arena was practically non-existent by the time the two leaders had arrived on site.
And inside the BOK Center, which holds up to 19,000 people, the crowd was well below capacity with large swaths of empty seats in the upper levels…
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/503759-trump-makes-defiant-return-to-campaign-stage-amid-controversies
If you saw photos of the rally, the upper level was almost empty.
Here’s my favorite part of Trump’s speech: President Trump on Saturday quipped that he encouraged administration officials to slow down testing capacity for the coronavirus because the increased identification of cases made the country look bad.
The Trump campaign in a statement blamed the attendance on media and protesters in the area surrounding the arena.
Lieu also mocked the president’s campaign after it canceled plans for Trump and Pence to address supporters in an overflow space outside of the arena.
“I believe the correct word would be ‘underflow.’ The small number of people at the #TrumpTulsaRally has now become a big embarrassment for @realDonaldTrump.”
Slowing COVID-19 testing is Trump’s way to prove that this country is in good shape. No tests = no virus. Great thinking!!
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Video: In Tulsa, Trump Plays Down Coronavirus Cases and Demonizes Protesters
June 20, 2020
President Trump said he wanted to slow coronavirus testing, questioned protesters’ toppling of Confederate monuments across the country and vowed to defeat his presumptive Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, in November.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
✔
@AOC
Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID
Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. https://twitter.com/parscale/status/1274484815576907778 …
Brad Parscale
✔
@parscale
Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally.
They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering.
Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/20/anti-trump-protesters-interfere-presidents-rally-f/ …
442K
7:27 PM – Jun 20, 2020
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https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T
STUPID TRUMP COMMENT. If someone doesn’t have COVID-19, they won’t add to the number of infected nor the number of dead. Keep the numbers of known infected down so that the U.S. isn’t the laughing stock of the world due to its ignorant leader.
Trump says, “When you do more testing, you’re going to find more people. So it say to my people, slow the testing down, please.”
Watch ‘They Test and They Test’: Trump Brushes Off Rise in Covid-19 Cases on Times Video:
President Trump claimed rising numbers of coronavirus cases as states reopen across the country were due to increased testing.