In some ways, what Donald Trump didn’t say on Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at a rally that was billed as his big post-pandemic return to the campaign trail, matters more than what he did. In more than ninety minutes onstage, not one mention of the murder of George Floyd. Not one mention of the murder of Breonna Taylor. Barely a mention of the hundred and nineteen thousand Americans killed by covid-19, or of the tens of millions thrown out of work, facing uncertain futures for themselves and their families. This is the President who was, just a few weeks ago, supposedly considering a big speech on race and unity. Instead, on Saturday, Trump did a cool twenty minutes on his experience of walking down a slippery ramp after delivering the graduation speech at West Point last weekend. He also bragged about the stock market; called covid-19 the “kung flu”; accused Representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, of wanting to turn America into a failed state “just like the country from where she came”; and said that he instructed a military officer during negotiations with Boeing not to put anything “in writing,” because he wanted to potentially skip out on paying a multimillion-dollar order-cancellation fee for new Air Force One planes.
A long spring of pain has just ended in America; on the first night of summer, Trump both proved incapable of addressing that pain and confessed that he has contributed to it. From the moment covid-19 emerged, Trump has done his best to downplay the disease. “I like the numbers where they are,” he said back in March—a sentiment that then became government policy. More recently, Trump has become fixated on a peculiar, circular argument about testing. “If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases,” he said in May, an assertion as inane as it is inarguable. On Saturday, Trump took things a step further, telling us—bragging, really—that he’d discouraged government officials from trying to get a full picture of the outbreak. “I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please,’ ” he said. Within minutes, Trump’s aides were trying to clean up his mess, saying the President had been “joking.”
That we have a President whose priority is denying reality is a public-health catastrophe. But what did he even want his supporters to take away from this confession? Campaign rallies play a special role in Trump’s life and his politics. These events are where the legend of his connection to his base was born. White House reporters often tell us that Trump’s aides think of these events as Presidential mood enhancers: when things are tough, Trump can blow off a little steam and enjoy the fawning of thousands of fans clad in merchandise bearing his name. But Saturday’s event, which was supposed to make a big show of the country bouncing back by attracting a capacity crowd to a big indoor arena, was a logistical nightmare for Trump’s campaign. Public-health officials in Tulsa begged the President not to hold the event, and the campaign, though it didn’t require the use of masks, made attendees sign health waivers in order to secure tickets. On Saturday, news came that a half-dozen campaign employees who worked on organizing the rally had tested positive for the coronavirus. Continue reading.