Gestures Wildly [DOT 22/6/20]

Welcome back to Monday. What is even going on with *gestures wildly* all this? I took over Monday duty so that Rip could get some rest, but as they say, no rest for the weary. Here we go…


I oscillate between finding this whole thing hysterical, and then becoming hysterical when I think about 100,000+ dead Americans.

Tulsa Fire Department says Trump rally attendance was about 6,200
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/503781-tulsa-fire-department-says-trump-rally-attendance-was-about-6200?rnd=1592751253


Deadsplinter gang over/under on when this guy gets fired? Or does he just ‘disappear’?

Brad Parscale faces Trump ‘fury’ after Tulsa comeback rally flops
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/21/brad-parscale-donald-trump-tulsa-rally-covid-ivanka-kushner-rick-wilson


He won’t back down!

Tom Petty’s family issues a cease and desist order to Trump campaign
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/21/politics/tom-petty-trump-cease-and-desist-trnd/index.html


This happened this weekend too y’all. I’m trying to keep up, but it’s a lot.

Trump AG Barr will escape impeachment thanks to ‘corrupt’ Republicans – Nadler
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/21/donald-trump-ag-william-barr-impeachment-republicans-berman-nadler


Same wave, different day.

U.S. reports more than 30,000 coronavirus cases two days straight, the highest number since May 1
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/20/us-reports-his-number-of-daily-coronavirus-cases-since-may-1.html


Sprots?

Football may not happen at all this year, Fauci warns
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/us/football-happen-fauci-spt-trnd/index.html


Stonks!

Dow futures drop more than 100 points as coronavirus cases continue to climb
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/21/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html


I hope all the dads had a nice Father’s Day weekend!

What five black fathers are saying to their children about this historic moment
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/06/19/what-five-black-fathers-are-saying-their-children-about-this-historic-moment/?arc404=true


The kids are all right:
K-pop fans and TikTok teens say they reserved tickets for Trump’s Tulsa rally to leave seats empty
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/21/21298169/kpop-fans-tiktok-tickets-trump-tulsa-rally-empty-seats


I know nothing about KPOP, but this video has a billion views(!) so must be a good one. We have no choice but to stan.

Have as good a Monday as you can!

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24 Comments

  1. So, when I heard about the youths trolling the rally, I loled. But quickly realized that it gives drumph a very valid excuse for the low numbers. But they denied it! Instead going with an easily disprovable lie that protesters kept fans from entering. It’s baffling.

    • …it’s on odd one…on the one hand anything that serves to demonstrate the diminutive stature of the remaining segment of his “base” is a good thing…partly because there’s an outside chance that people might start calling the voting bloc the T-rump…but mostly because it should cast the extreme bullshit being pulled in every direction to suppress &/or manipulate votes to over-represent the political minority in stark terms

      …but I also wonder if anyone’s going to get to grips with the consequences of all those people’s details being in their data-mining clutches…I don’t mean a bunch of teens getting begging letters from the campaign so much as finding they suddenly have a swampful of maga flavor trolls-for-trump all over their online landscape

      …which seems like a completely conceivable outcome?

      • Apparently they used burner phones and dummy email accounts. Remember, in this administration only Barron is good with the cyber. The average TikTok user probably knew how to shield their identity online before they entered kindergarten.

        • …that’s encouraging…I guess it makes sense that we’d be getting into the “digital native” demographics these days but it’s an arms race I fear my own generation may not be equal to…so I worry about some of this stuff

          …guess I ought to have more faith

        • I also strongly suspect Trump’s online operation is heavily tilted toward getting big numbers rather than valid information.

          I bet they don’t bother throwing up any speedbumps to anyone signing up so Parscale could brag about his numbers.

      • Grifters, all. Everyone fawns all over George Conway on Twitter for ‘speaking out’ and ‘doing the right thing’ but him and his wife are just grifters of the highest order.

      • I have no doubt the Trumo campaign’s big data, microtargeting stuff is wildly overrated. They will get results from their advertising because they are throwing a ton of money at the wall and some of it will stick.

        But all of the stuff about magic benefits of crafting special psychologically targeted messaging at swing voters in crucial districts is BS. They’re doing this kind of campaign because it is a great opportunity for grift, charging a major premium for minor database fiddling that adds no extra value.

  2. “Brad Parscale? What a loser. I never heard of this guy. He just showed up one day. I don’t know who hired him.”
    — Donald J. Trump, probably.

    The interesting thing to me is that anyone expected 19,000 in Tulsa. I was in Tulsa in March. Even before COVID 19, the place was utterly deserted. Like, stroll down the middle of a downtown street at noon on a workday for 30 minutes without seeing any cars or people deserted. Which I literally did, several times.

    People that lived there kept saying everyone was in the suburbs. I was like, are you sure? Have you sent someone to check? Because, hand to God, this is how every zombie movie ever starts.

      • I found a couple of people. Hotel clerks, restaurant servers, etc. I remember standing outside my hotel, looking up at a 20-story building that basically covered most of a block, and there was one lone light in one room. I didn’t wander far after dark. It was creepy.

      • I mean, one of my former co-workers, who was also a consultant, was from there, and her husband, daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters were there…
        So I know there’s at least 5 out of 6 folks who are *probably* still there…

        It’s a big state though.
        If you spread that handful of folks out, there’s still gonna be a LOT of space to fill…

    • His rallies have been like this before.

      https://www.newsweek.com/trump-claims-theres-no-empty-seats-maga-rallies-1466759

      “Images from Trump’s rally in Dallas, Texas, last week showed large empty spaces in the arena just as he was about to start. One reporter posted a screenshot of a Fox News live stream showing open standing room near the stage.”

      The problem is that the top of the foodchain reporters have been willfully ignorant of this, and have stuck to a narrative of diehard adoring Trump fans even when the evidence was staring them in the face.

        • True. It’s not just his base that’s eroded — it’s his public image. He’s looking more and more pathetic every day, as things spiral outside his “control” (which was always fictional, to be clear). It’s hard for MAGAs to push his “all-knowing, all-seeing, 6 moves ahead” narrative when it’s clear that he’s utterly bewildered, completely out of his depth, and/or incoherent most of the time.

          • The frustrating thing is that it’s only now that the press is finally getting a little less timid about the obvious physical and mental issues to go with the fact that people don’t actually beat down the doors to hear him speak.

            No president has ever depended so much on the illusion of power as Trump, and no president in decades has been propped up by the press like Trump.

            • Yeah. The second he trotted out his FAKE NEWS bullshit, they should have pulled the gloves off and gone full William Randolph Hearst on his ass. He’s already gutted your credibility, media, what do you have to lose?

              But no, they were careful and calm and ethical and where has that gotten them? They’re now despised by 90 percent of the population, instead of just 40.

          • “he’s utterly bewildered, completely out of his depth, and/or incoherent most of the time. ”

            That could be said of any true believer MAGAts. They’ve been playing mental tic tac toe all their lives while the universe has been playing 4D chess.

  3. > Deadsplinter gang over/under on when this guy gets fired? Or does he just ‘disappear’?

    rick wilson says it best:

    Rick Wilson, a bestselling author, former Republican consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super pac, was critical of Parscale’s approach.

    “Brad broke the first rule of American politics: under promise and over deliver,” he told the Guardian. “Brad’s survival now depends on the good offices of his patrons inside the Trump camp, and [Ivanka and Kushner] are already signaling their displeasure to the media.

    “The only X factor is whether anyone else in Trump’s crew of skells [and] grifters … has offered to keep the scam running.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/21/brad-parscale-donald-trump-tulsa-rally-covid-ivanka-kushner-rick-wilson

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