By Allan Wall
06/22/2020
The Democrat/ Main Stream Media Complex want you to believe the relaunch of President Trump’s 2020 campaign on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fell flat. They’re lying. I was there.
And I’m a connoisseur of Trump rallies: Oklahoma City (2015), Oklahoma City (2016), Topeka, Kansas (2018), Columbia Missouri (2018), and almost Springfield, Missouri (2018), where I was unable to enter because so many people attended.
Attendance was lower this time, for obvious reasons I’ll discuss below. But the level of motivation and support for Trump among rally-goers was as high as at any Trump rally I’ve attended. Trump sounded like his old self and hit key hot-button topics, not least the arson, looting, and vandalism of the George Floyd Riots.
I went to the rally in Tulsa’s BOK Center with my niece and younger son and his friend, all three of whom served as volunteers there.
Trump rallies are unique political events. They’re part religious revival, part pep rally, part rock concert and part stand-up comedy. And, they’re a venue for fellowship among like-minded Americans. The attendees were mostly Oklahomans with a few non-Okies from neighboring and even distant states. I met a young man who drove from Minnesota and a couple who flew in from California.
Lower attendance, which the Dem/MSM complex wants you to believe means Trump’s support is dissipating, doesn’t mean Trump’s base won’t show up at the polls. There would good reasons for not attending:
Sure no blocked gates @cnn. @cnn if you think families with children will push through this your sick.
America, this is the country @CNN is ok with, think about that.
This is the main gate of the rally: pic.twitter.com/wSKwotoajq
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 21, 2020
It’s simply not true that the 19,199-seat arena was only one-third full [Trump Rally Filled Less Than a Third of Arena: Protest Wrap, DNYUZ, June 21,2020]. The tweet that accompanied this video says the enthusiasm of 2015 is gone, but the images suggest the arena was two-thirds full. This photo, focusing on the mostly empty upper tier, was deceptively featured on the increasingly tiresome Drudge Report
The Hill reported that fewer than 6,200 attended the rally, an estimate based on the fire marshal’s tally of scanned tickets [Tulsa Fire Department says Trump rally attendance was about 6,200, by Justin Wise, June 21, 2020]. But when I entered, no one scanned my phone, which raises the obvious question of how many others weren’t scanned.
A Trump campaign put the figure at 12,000, The Hill’s Wise reported, which comports with The New York Times’s estimate that the seats were “at least one-third empty,” meaning at least two-thirds could have been full [Trump Rally Fizzles as Attendance Falls Short of Campaign’s Expectations, by Michael D. Shear, Maggie Haberman, Astead W. Herndon, New York Times, June 20, 2020].
An aside: TikTok’s owner is a Chinese tech tycoon. Will Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others crowing about the “Tik Tok teens” who sabotaged the event be investigated for colluding with a foreign government to influence a U.S. presidential election?
There were a number of speakers before Trump’s speech. The invocation was delivered by Dr. Alveda King (niece of MLK), there was a flag salute and the national anthem. Several Oklahomans spoke, as did Diamond and Silk, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lara Trump and Eric Trump.
Vice President Mike Pence delivered an address — full YouTube video here — with a fairly courageous comment, which was met with chants of “Build the Wall.” Pence noted that police are among the finest Americans and directly denounced the Floyd Riots: “There’s no excuse for what happened to George Floyd, but there’s also no excuse for the rioting, looting, and violence that followed.”
Trump’s speech itself was unquestionably a success. He kept a rapt audience thoroughly engaged for more than 90 minutes [Donald Trump Tulsa, Oklahoma Rally Speech Transcript, Rev.com, June 21, 2020]. How many politicians can do that these days without graphics?
Some high points that should be used in his campaign:
LAW AND ORDER
Most Americans just don’t agree with allowing mobs to loot and plunder our cities. Trump said:
But Americans have watched left wing radicals burn down buildings, loot businesses, destroy private property, injure hundreds of dedicated police officers…And injure thousands upon thousands of people only to hear the radical fake news say what a beautiful rally it was. [14:28]
DESTRUCTION OF OUR HERITAGE
Trump mentioned this several times:
The left-wing anarchists tore down a statue of Thomas Jefferson…They decapitated a statue of Christopher Columbus…Two days ago, leftist radicals in Portland, Oregon ripped down a statue of George Washington and wrapped it in an American flag and set the American flag on fire.” [37:54]
Trump should remind people of his own question from 2017, in his unfairly-maligned “very fine people” comments:
George Washington was a slave owner…. So will George Washington now lose his status. Are we gonna take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? … Are we gonna take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now are we gonna take down his statue? … You’re changing history, changing culture….
[Donald Trump to reporters: 'George Washington was a slave owner,' YouTube, August 15, 2017]
JOE BIDEN
Trump skillfully drove a wedge between Biden and the radicals in his party.
Yet Biden remains silent in his basement in the face of this brutal assault on our nation and the values of our nation. Joe Biden has surrendered to his party and to the left-wing mob. He has no control. Does anybody honestly think he controls these radical maniacs? [41:14]
If the Democrats gain power, then the rioters will be in charge and no one will be safe and no one will have control. Joe Biden is not the leader of his party. Joe Biden is a helpless puppet of the radical left, and he’s not radical left. [42:35]
FLAG SALUTE
Nowadays, disrespecting the flag is even A-OK with NASCAR. Trump said:
We will never kneel to our national anthem or our great American flag. We will stand proud and we will stand tall. [54:54]
VIOLENCE, FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND THE BORDER
Trump skillfully segued several topics into one accusation against the Democrats:
Joe Biden and the Democrats want to prosecute Americans for going to church, but not for burning a church. They believe you can riot, vandalize and destroy, but you cannot attend a peaceful pro-America rally. They want to punish your thought, but not their violent crimes. They want to abolish bail, abolish and open up your borders. They want open borders … [56:26]
RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, LAW AND ORDER, IMMIGRATION AND BIDEN
Trump offered another colorful montage of Democrat dangers:
They want to disarm law, abiding citizens and dismantle our police forces while freeing vicious MS-13 gang members. In Joe Biden’s America, rioters, looters, and criminal aliens have more rights than law abiding citizens. And that’s true. In my administration, we defend American citizens and we deport MS-13 members or put them in jail if we have to. [58:13]
DEMOCRAT CITIES
Why does Trump get the blame when these “racist cities” are run by Democrats?
The chaos you’re seeing in our Democratic run cities, these are all run by the Democrats, is what will happen in every city and community and America, and much, much worse if we don’t keep them out. We have to do this. We have to go to the polls on November 3rd and the rest of you know what to do. You know what to do. Got to keep the White House. [58:13]
This ought to be brought up again and again. And name names, of cities and mayors:
The murder rate in Baltimore and Detroit is higher than El Salvador, Guatemala, or even Afghanistan. How are they doing, the Democrats running those cities? Your whole country will be like that. [1:31:59]
BIDEN AND IMMIGRATION INSANITY
He [Biden] voted for mass amnesty for illegal aliens. He supports sanctuary cities and now Biden wants to end immigration enforcement and he wants to require you to provide free healthcare for millions and millions of illegal aliens. [1:00:01]
CANCEL CULTURE
Trump made it clear he understands exactly what’s going on.
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…This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans. They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place. [19:04]
If Joe Biden were to become president an emboldened left, will launch a full-scale assault on American life. You know that. They’ll expel anyone who disagrees with them. Look what happens when you disagree. You use a term that’s perfect and they’re not happy with it. They call you a racist. They call you a horrible person. They want to crush religious liberty. [1:07:-08]
LEFT-RIGHT DOUBLE STANDARD
In Seattle the Democrat mayor and the Democrat city council have surrendered control of six city blocks to an anarchist … Now these are anarchists, these are not protestors. You listen to the fake news, they say, “Oh, the protesters were lovely.” Could you imagine if people just even slightly to the right tried to take over Seattle? They’d have machine guns out to get them, but these people can take over the city… [37:54]
THE HISTORIC AMERICAN NATION
Near the end, Trump unabashedly linked us to our ancestors in the Historic American Nation, which the rioters hate.
We stand on the shoulders of American heroes who crossed the oceans, blazed the trails, settled the continent, tamed the wilderness, dug out the Panama Canal, laid down the railroads, revolutionized industries, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and made America the single greatest nation in the history of the world. And we are making it greater and greater every single day. Proud citizens like you helped build this country, and together we are taking back our country. [1:37:08]
My conclusion: Trump still has good political instincts and he showed in Tulsa he can still connect with his base. What he needs is the discipline to put together a campaign based on those instincts, to appeal to the undecided voters who don’t like what’s going on in our country.
The clock is ticking. Less than five months to go…
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008after many years residing in Mexico. Allan’s wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.
