Day 1,249: Trump publicly silent and privately furious after Tulsa rally
Donald Trump’s Saturday rally in Tulsa was an unmitigated disaster. Pushing aside rambling about a ramp for a huge chunk of his speech and plenty of other strange tangents, the optics were horrible. Despite boasting that one million ticket requests had been received, just 6,200 people showed up to the arena that holds more than 19,000.
In public, his silence was noteworthy. Sundays are a frequent day for tweetstorms, where he’ll sometimes bang out over 100. This Sunday, Trump sent just two.
In private, however, aides felt a different wrath according to many reports. That began even before Trump spoke on Saturday night.
The president, who had been warned aboard Air Force One that the crowds at the arena were smaller than expected, was stunned, and he yelled at aides backstage while looking at the endless rows of empty blue seats in the upper bowl of the stadium, according to four people familiar with what took place. Brad Parscale, the campaign manager who had put the event together, was not present.
Walking off Marine One back at the White House just after midnight, Trump looked utterly defeated.
Trump’s annoyance began before he left for Tulsa and boiled over by Sunday.
President Donald Trump is “furious” at the “underwhelming” crowd at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday evening, a major disappointment for what had been expected to be a raucous return to the campaign trail after three months off because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to multiple people close to the White House.
The president was fuming at his top political aides Saturday even before the rally began after his campaign revealed that six members of the advance team on the ground in Tulsa had tested positive for COVID-19, including Secret Service personnel, a person familiar with the discussions said.
Trump asked those around him why the information was exposed and expressed annoyance that the coverage ahead of his mega-rally was dominated by the revelation.
Angry Trump followed by angrier Trump followed by a disappointing rally followed by angriest Trump is not what Trump’s campaign team was hoping for to re-energize his 2020 reelection bid. But it’s what they got and it was entirely self-inflicted.
1,249 days in, 213 to go
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