Another day, another Trump rally, another load of stupidity and lies foisted upon a hoard of gullibly adoring Fox News viewers.
Tonight Trump unloaded his usual pile of verbal manure onto the crowd in Lebanon, Ohio as he shirked the duties that real presidents would be handling in the midst of a major natural disaster with — as The New York Times put it in their headline — “Residents of Florida Coast Increasingly Desperate for Food and Shelter.”
Trump’s headlining performance was pretty much what you’d expect. You’ve already heard most of the enormous bundle of lies that constitutes “Trump’s Greatest Hits,” falsehoods that he feels obligated to repeat for his fans at every performance. He did “Lock Her Up,” “Pocahontas,” No Man Is Safe,” “Build The Wall,” “Voter Fraud,” “Space Force,” the new “MS-13 Are Animals” Kanye remix called “MS-13 Garbage,” and his latest hit “Dems Are an Angry Mob.”
But the number that took everyone by surprise was his Toto cover: “Africa.”
Inspired by his cyber-bully-fighting immigrant wife — who was somehow let back into the country after her jaunt to Ghana, Malawi, and Kenya, despite having worked illegally in the U.S. without a proper visa when she first arrived on these shores, a violation that would have had ICE at the door of any other immigrant these days— Trump tried out a new riff and alternate lyrics that made the cover virtually unrecognizable.
“They need help. They definitely need help. It’s both beautiful and sad. It’s got every kind of emotion,” Trump cried to the crowd while butchering the melody completely.
The new minimalist lyrics weren’t a hit with critics who sensed a severe emotional disconnect between Trump and the new words, leading them to believe that he has never actually heard the drums echoing or even really thought about blessing the rains down in Africa.
Sensing that the crowd really wasn’t that interested in tales of the far-off continent, Trump quickly moved back to more familiar material and lied about his victory margin in Ohio, but the poor reaction to his version of Africa must have thrown him off his game, since he only inflated the numbers by a couple of points.
With TV ratings for Trump rallies on such a decline that even Fox News has cut back its wall to wall coverage of the events, Trump seems to be going through the motions in his latest performances. While he can still attract the crowds, he isn’t getting them in nearly as large numbers as he once did.
One anonymous local wag, when asked why he hadn’t attended tonight’s rally, responded that he had no interest in hearing the president repeat the same tired lies over and over and over and over.
“It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you, or literally anything else happening around here, to go see that moron,” he said. “In fact, there’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do to make me attend a Trump rally. I’d rather take some time to do the things we never had.”
With more discordant performances like this, Trump had better hope his audience doesn’t find a more harmonious replacement for his strident death metal tunes and weak rhymes. Perhaps he should bring back some of the staff that has already left his employ in the past couple of years. Robert Mueller is saying that they are singing quite well these days.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Based on original reporting and live tweets by Daniel Dale of The Toronto Star.
