Getting a Bronx Cheer

Yesterday, Trump had an enthusiastic rally in the Bronx.  A few things stood out.

The first is MAGOPs claiming the crowd was 100,000 and joyfully exploding over it.  And even the more “reasonable” are crowing over 30,000, while dancing around The Libs who they say must be terrified. 

In reality, the NYC aviation team, that uses helicopter surveillance and does this for a living, estimated the crowd at 3,000, upwards to maybe 7,000.

Second is that  there were reports that Trump bussed people in to get the crowd even that size.  I don’t know if that’s true, but even if not. New York City has a population of 8.8 million – and the metropolitan area is 18.8 million, so it’s not unreasonable to think that 3,000 people could take the subway to get there.  But did they?  Are all the 3,000 people who attended from the Bronx?  Could be – though what’s raised doubts in many minds is that video of the crowd is almost entirely white, and the Bronx is only 8.8% white.  Or for the math-challenged, 91.2% non-white. 

​But third is the question that most-occurred to me:  why in the world is Trump holding a rally in the Bronx??!  It just seems...weird.  They know Trump in the Bronx from half a century in New York and hate him.  From being sued by the federal government for racial prejudice in renting to his infamous full-page newspaper ad calling for a return to the death penalty during the later-exonerated Central Park Five.  And he left the city and moved to Florida.

And it’s not like he’s going to win New York.  The state hasn’t voted to elect a Republican candidate for president since Reagan in the 1984 election, 40 years ago.  He wasn’t there at a fundraising rally.  He doesn’t even have to be there because of his Manhattan trial – it’s not back in session until next Tuesday, so he had five days to barnstorm around the country and hold rallies.

It almost seems like he’s running low on money and wants to conserve it.  And having a rally in the Bronx, just across town from where he’s staying is the easiest and cheapest option.  I have no idea if that’s the reason – and it seems unlikely, though not remotely improbable.

By the way, as a side note, it should be added that had another of his Trump Moments, stumbling through a made-up word again, this time 'Patri-skfjskl', and then immediately changing the subject.  As I’ve mentioned before, this is not actually “stumbling” or glitching or slurring, as most reports have called it.  It’s actually a medical condition called paraphasia.  Psychiatrists say that it’s an early signal of dementia and describing it as making up a word that sounds similar to the word the person is trying to get out, but can’t – after which they change the subject.

In psychiatric circles this is common.  In the outside world, no, this is not normal.

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