Regarding a (fat orange) face in the crowd

“I think he’s done. Can I stick a fork in him now?”

Swamp Rabbit was reacting to Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, OK, where he managed to fill only 6,200 of the arena’s 19,000 seats after bragging that his campaign had fielded more than a million ticket requests. Watching his rant on TV, you could see the arena’s empty upper deck.

Afterwards, Trump’s fans and non-fans didn’t clash in Tulsa’s streets, even though Trump had done his best to make this happen by holding the rally only a day after Juneteenth and within a month of the anniversary of the Tulsa massacre.

During the event Trump condemned AOC and the radical left, lamented the fate of Confederate statues, and came out against further testing for the “kung flu.” He even attacked the media for commenting on the perilous journey he took down that stage ramp in West Point.

It was a desperate speech but I told Swamp Rabbit not to count out the hog monster, not yet. He made a fool of himself regarding COVID-19 and the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, but most of his fans are still out there, still bigoted and stupid, although apparently not so stupid as to attend an indoor rally during a pandemic.

Swamp Rabbit said, “Ain’t no way that evil clown recovers from Tulsa. He looked shocked by them empty seats. Reminded me of that movie where the wanna-be dictator loses his base and has to use an applause machine to make up for nobody coming to his rallies no more.”

“You mean A Face in the Crowd,” I replied. “Andy Griffith plays Lonesome Rhodes. Patricia Neal as his long-suffering girlfriend turns up the studio sound and the TV audience hears him calling them pigs and idiots.”

“That’s the one,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Trump’s fanboys ain’t heard him call them names yet but they saw him holding a Bible upside down, and they heard him tell them back in the winter that the virus was under control. They’re gonna toss him like an empty bag of Cheetos.”

“We’ll see, rabbit. I wish they’d toss him before he tries to steal the election.”