Donald Trump goes off deep end at rally after devastating Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort news
Donald Trump has been having a wee bit of a bad day. His campaign chairman has been found guilty on eight felony counts. His former attorney just named him as unindicted co-conspirator. Even Trump’s former (whatever Omarosa’s job was) has released a new video that blows up his defense argument. As fate would have it, Trump happened to have a campaign rally scheduled tonight in West Virginia. His speech is, well, how can we say this? We may run out of adjectives.
At one point during Donald Trump’s rally speech tonight, he suggested that he may begin campaigning without the accompaniment of the Secret Service. Then he claimed that Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer control Congress, even though his own Republican Party has majority control in the House and Senate. Then the crowd began chanting “Lock her up” in reference to Hillary Clinton, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that it was Donald Trump’s people, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, who got locked up today (Cohen is now out on bail).
Who are these deranged people who are showing up and indulging in this kind of deluded fantasy? That doesn’t really matter. Most of the mainstream media has spent the past year and a half obsessing over Donald Trump’s base, but that started to change today. Palmer Report has pointed out all along that Trump’s base is perhaps 15% to 20% of the country, and that the other half of Trump’s approval rating comes from people who never liked him that much to begin with but aren’t ready to admit they blew it by voting for him. At one point this afternoon an entire MSNBC panel was discussing how Trump’s base alone can’t keep him propped up.
So Donald Trump can keep holding these rallies for a bit longer if he likes, but it’s little more than an exercise in ego stroking. The people at these rallies can’t keep him in office. Richard Nixon still had his core base when he was ousted from office; what finished him off was that he’d lost all meaningful support outside of his base. Trump’s true believers may be saying “Lock Her Up” but back in the real world, the real story is “Lock Him Up.”
