There is usually only one take away.

[edhopper]

The entire record of political events are not important, the take away from them are. In debates and speeches, it is usually just one thing. Bush looking at his watch or McCain looking disoriented. Romney saying "Folder full of women" or the "Please proceed" moment.
For Trump, as they plan these large events for him to look good, we get not the Commander in Chief in front of the cadets, but a guy who can't drink or walk down a ramp. His big rally to get back on th3e campaign trail will only be remembered for the half empty arena. Politics in America is not nuanced. It is about the one take away. And Team Trump is serving up one loser after another.

[mucifer]

1. It's all meaningless if they can rig things the way they are doing it in Kentucky

[edhopper]

3. This is true

and scary.

My hope is that we GOTV and overwhelm them so much their cheating can't take the election.

Like Obama in Ohio in 2012.

[bobbieinok]

10. Voter suppression, GOP blocking vote by mail and CLOSING POSTAL SERVICE

See the massive number of polss closed in KY for Tue!

And hurdles IA GOP legislature putting in way of absentee voting

[Beartracks]

17. This +1000. No one should feel confident that he's already lost...

... just because he's an incompetent buffoon with a lousy track record on EVERYthing and a tanking popularity at the polls. The country will need EVERY one of us to vote Trump and his kiss-ass Republican co-conspirators out of office.

=========

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. You are correct. I just wish the "talking heads" would give this "event" the same

treatment as they gave Mr Howard Dean in 2004.
Within four days, The Scream was broadcast 633 times on national news networks and cable channels. The audio used in the airings of the scream was from Dean's unidirectional microphone, which decreased the volume of the background noise to the point where only Dean's voice was hearable; this didn't reflect the actual volume of the room that night, as the crowd was extremely loud.

But, they wont. They NEED a sensational race for ratings.

[edhopper]

4. The media can be a problem

though they have been calling out Trump's lies more of late. I guess tens of thousands of people dying has got their attention.

[crickets]

7. +1

[uponit7771]

19. +1

[lapfog_1]

5. The visible sweat on Nixon's upper lip and forehead in 1960

reagan saying " we won't hold your youth an inexperience against you"

Clinton playing the saxophone

[edhopper]

6. Yep

It's unfortunate that politics in this country are sometimes more about unconnected moments than policy, but they are.

Comey with an unimportant laptop swings the election.

[flibbitygiblets]

8. It was actually even worse: the arena was only 1/3 full. (6200/19000)

...unless 2 out of 3 tRump supporters came dressed as empty chairs, a lie I would not put past him.

[aggiesal]

24. What makes it worse and nobody is talking about it is that ...

it was first come, first served.
With 1 million tickets/reservations issued, they couldn't find 19,000 trumpettes to fill the stadium.
They're trying to blame the ticket scam by the internet millennials.

All the trumpettes had to do was show up.

They didn't show up because they can see what's rally happening.
Pendejo45 is crashing and they don't want to be a part of it.

[flibbitygiblets]

8. It was actually even worse: the arena was only 1/3 full. (6200/19000)

...unless 2 out of 3 tRump supporters came dressed as empty chairs, a lie I would not put past him.

[BarbD]

11. Reminds me of Joe McCaarthy's fall to irrelevance

when the lies were finally exposed. Unfortunately not before too many lives were destroyed.

[Scarsdale]

12. The aides only have

so much to work with. tRump is a failure, always has been, always will be. Even if someone wrote the most excellent speeches (and they do not) he could not read them clearly and smoothly. He is only concerned for himself, the rest of us do not matter. The only winner through all this disaster of almost 5 years is Putin. No shots fired, no missiles launched, yet he has destroyed the USA. I hope the gop enjoyed the Russian money they all so eagerly took. They colluded with Russia, sold their souls for rubles.

[crickets]

25. Depressing but accurate summation. nt

[LiberalLovinLug]

13. Its sad in one way that those few moments are all people remember

Other examples listed above too. Both good moments and bad. And how that is sometimes the only takeaway for many.

Don't want to sound too Meta here, but in another sense, it is those moments that in combination, reveal the person. Usually there are more than one. Good and bad. Like Clinton playing the sax, and Clinton saying "I did not have sex with that woman". It is the totality of those moments where the character is revealed and one defines the character for oneself. Unfair though that may be, it is a product of our age.

Obama did not have many bad takeaway moments. The good ones far outweighed them. But Trump has so so many awful ones. One of the biggest was the Access Hollywood bus tape. (which we all thought was going to be his undoing). But think about it, can you even remember one good takeaway moment from the Idiot in Chief? When all Americans, even if some begrudgingly, thought he shone? This difficulty to find any positive takeaway moment says a lot about who he is.

[Beartracks]

18. Lack of positives, oddly, is not a negative for the MAGA faithful.

[LiberalLovinLug]

23. On a related note

Sometimes I enter the dark lair of YouTube commentators from some political video. Or another news website.

The one thing that has stopped the conversation back for them, is when I ask, "what exactly has Trump done for you or your family personally to help make your lives better? How has he improved things for you?" That's usually when I get nothing back.

[Beartracks]

26. I don't think a lot of Trumpers stop and think about that because, well...

... it would mean stopping and thinking. MAGA is about the emotional stress release of feeling smugly superior and beating up on others, and thinking too much works against that.

===========

[LiberalLovinLug]

27. Yup

[edhopper]

29. They don't care about that

only what he has done TO those other folks.

[ananda]

14. Trump has met the enemy and it is him.

!!!

[zipplewrath]

21. His image is already established

There are innumerable examples of politicians being defined by the events in which they existed. Once voters have an image of you, it is very hard to change their perception. Usually it can only be altered by extraordinary events that redefine you. That'd be wars, natural disasters and maybe a major diplomatic victory. I can see him trying, I don't see him succeeding.

The current image is old, feeble and brain addled. And the lying, bragging and narcissism is starting to work against him. His only hope about now is Putin and his bots. Not even sure Barr can help him now.

[yellowdogintexas]

15. There are photos showing a packed house and a full overflow field out there

I wonder how long it took for somebody to photoshop that.

I found them in a twitter string, claiming everything was false, in response to Steve Schmidt and others.

#45 telling the attendees that the demonstrators kept the crowds away, blocking turnstiles and so forth.

[Beartracks]

20. Why bother with fakes? Any MAGA there would know... oh - they don't care about lies. nm.

[Beartracks]

22. There's time lapse of the area near the arena before and during the event.

About 48 hours of time lapse, perhaps. Goes from Friday, through Saurday, to Dawn Sunday.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/watch-now-time-lapse-from-friday-to-sunday-of-the-area-around-bok-during-president/article_a3d191b5-1258-5f51-832e-a1f41a089e33.html#1

To the left of the screen is what appears to be a staging area on a blocked off street. Come Saturday, you see red-hatted crowds gathering there. The arena is on the right side of the screen, another couple blocks distant. At some point, you see the crowd start to flow out of the far end of the staging area, and immediately you see them begin to amass at the arena entrance. To my understanding, the zone between the staging area and the arena itself was tightly controlled, so no impediments to crowd flow there. And you clearly see from the video that at no time was the staging area itself overrun with or blocked by protesters.

=========

[Lonestarblue]

16. I hope to see the photo of the empty arena in an ad.

The empty arena is a perfect metaphor for an empty presidency. Trump is empty: of ideas, f knowledge, of compassion, of humanity, of honor, of morals, of decency, of honesty, of empathy in the face of thousands of deaths, of adherence to the US Constitution. I’m sure Lincoln Project would do a great job portraying his complete emptiness of the traits of an effective.

[BadGimp]

28. Great observation!