In the film, The Death of Stalin, a concerto is broadcast live but not recorded. Stalin calls the studio and demands a recording, whereupon the director has to gather the audience and orchestra back to repeat the performance so it can be recorded.
We know from various tell-alls that Trump loves to replay his speeches in private.
For the Trump regime, reality only exists in its mediated, reproduced form. Darn that Matrix, making the El Paso Fire Department into an agent of the Deep State.
Trump’s El Paso rally was out-shown by the adjacent March for Truth rally that featured Beto O’Rourke. But we saw what counts for Trump.
The crowd and the spectacle are more important to Individual-1, especially because of the need to divert attention and distract media from real trouble like #TrumpRussia.
That was the Trump speech in El Paso last night, with twitter-bots boosting the crowd size in real time and attempting to diminish a counter-rally of at least equivalent size meeting a block away. Even Laura Ingraham was enlisted to pimp the crowd size.
It was another lie-fest, with a misshapen message from the SOTU that was ignorant of facts on the ground. It didn’t matter to Individual-1, because he got another opportunity to shape a 2020 campaign that today pitched a July 4th parade on the scale of his failed military parade but offers another opportunity for donations.
The problem, of course, is that Trump either has no idea what he’s talking (point) (“about”) or he assumes you’re easily fooled.
According to law enforcement data, the city had low crime rates well before a border barrier was constructed between 2008 and mid-2009.
- Violent crime has been dropping in El Paso since its modern-day peak in 1993 and was at historic lows before a fence was authorized by Congress in 2006. Violent crime actually ticked up during the border fence’s construction and after its completion, according to police data collected by the FBI.
As Trump lies go, this one stands out for a couple of reasons. First, it was carefully scripted. It’s one thing when the president peddles nonsense because he got confused by something he saw on television, or because he cooked up some oddity in his overactive imagination. But in a State of the Union address, which the Republican read from his trusted teleprompter, the standards are supposed to be higher.
And yet, Trump’s claims were brazenly untrue. At no point in recent memory was El Paso one of the nation’s most dangerous cities, and at no point after it received border barriers did the city see a sharp drop in the crime rate.
www.msnbc.com/...
And then there’s the visceral acting out of actual media effects upon an audience within the venue, when a guy decides to take action literally:
Daniel Dale’s (@ddale8) summary tweets of the Trump rally never fail:
"Almost 40,000 people were murdered in Mexico," Trump says. He first tweeted the correct number, 33,341, then made it "38,000" in his remarks at the White House, then tonight made it "almost 40,000."
Trump: "By the way, there is nothing better than a good old-fashioned German shepherd. It's hard to believe. It's true."
!!! Trump: "Certain types of dogs. You do love your dogs, don't you? I wouldn't mind having one, honestly, but I don't have any time. How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?...Feels a little phony to me...That's not the relationship I have with my people."
Trump says he's been advised to get a dog because it's good politically, but "that's not the relationship I have with my people," his base.
- Trump on getting a dog, in summary:
- - I wouldn't mind one but I don't have any time
- - It would look phony for me to walk a dog
- - My base doesn't need to see me with a dog
www.dailykos.com/…
Because like an inaugural, who wouldn’t invest in a July 4th parade grift, even if there couldn’t be tanks.
Because it will always be about the crowds.
Despite the active measures, investigating the ethics of mass rallies and propaganda may yet make a comeback in this Congress, even if someone or something “is interfering with their brains”.
"В действительности, дело еще серьезнее – Россия вмешивается в их мозг, и они не знают, что делать с собственным измененным сознанием."
This is a pointed riff on idea of elex interference. /2
The farce that Trump projects in his rallies is another, similar form of information warfare exacted upon the US.
Jarvanka will claim that they were “never offered an opportunity to avoid their own prosecution”.
And ethics might actually return to Congress.