Transcript: Trump Tirade over Shrinking Rally Crowds Emasculates MAGA

As Trump’s rallies fail to ally GOP midterm fears, the author of a piece on his diminishing stature explains how his cascading failures are driving away his supporters right when he needs them most.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 6 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump has been holding rallies lately to energize his voters for the midterms, but he’s running into problems. Press scrutiny of his declining crowd sizes has been harsh, and he exploded in a crazed rant over this, fuming that in fact his rallies are “HOTTER” than ever.

But if anything, these rallies are an admission of weakness and failure. Republicans themselves are leaking word that Trump’s campaigning is a signal of the midterm emergency the GOP faces in deep red areas. And one rally in Ohio displayed a scene that’s doubly revealing along these lines.

We’re getting into all of this with Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, a skilled interpreter of MAGA, who has a good piece on Trump’s epic but failing struggle to make voters like him. Amanda, always good to have you on.

Amanda Marcotte: Thanks for having me.

Sargent: So Trump has done rallies in Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Texas, and he’s doing one Monday night in Nebraska. The Times had two pieces showing his crowd size is diminishing considerably.

In Alabama, the Times reports, upper sections were, quote, “almost completely empty,” in an arena that’s smaller than previous ones. And there were empty sections at an even smaller arena in Ohio, the Times noted. Amanda, even more to the point, polls are showing Republicans turning on him in spite of all these efforts. Your thoughts on all that?

Marcotte: Yeah, I think it’s twofold. I think obviously he’s aging, he’s getting even weaker. The political situation is so embarrassing right now that even his loyal supporters are beginning to be uncomfortable. We are hitting that same portion of, like, Bush’s second term, where even his voters just didn’t want to defend him anymore.

It feels, I think, for a lot of the people that support him, it feels kind of pointless at this point. Like, so much of the reason that a lot of Trump supporters kept doubling down and doubling down and doubling down was that they wanted to never admit they were wrong to liberals, first of all.

And second of all, as long as this political project had legs and they could kind of keep reviving the corpse and pushing into the future, it had value to them. So there was a purpose behind blind loyalty. But you can’t reelect Trump. It’s not worth it anymore, now that he’s a lame duck and there’s only so much juice they can squeeze out of this lemon.

Sargent: So Trump raged wildly at the Times for questioning his crowd sizes. He posted on Truth Social that his Ohio rally was “great” and “PACKED,” in all caps. He accused the Times of dishonesty. And he said this about his rallies:

“The rallies are HOTTER than ever. The networks refuse under any circumstances to show the crowds, but you can hear the thunderous applause, and you know that it represents thousands and thousands of people.”

He also said: “I never have empty seats, never have and never will.”

Amanda, I don’t know, for someone who’s doing so smashingly well, Trump sounds awfully angry and unhappy. Your thoughts about that?

Marcotte: I mean, wasn’t it at one of these rallies he literally got up and said that he knows more about every subject on the planet, on the whole planet, than any other person knows about anything? When you’re standing there being like, I’m the greatest of all time, and to a half-empty crowd—it’s like the trope on television when somebody says something and then comically they get disproven the next minute.

Sargent: And on top of that, this actually gets at a real thing, which is that in three of these states that he’s held rallies in, there really are tough Senate........

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