When you reach the point where absurdity obscures reality, we generally call that jumping the shark. The history behind the phrase dates back to an episode of the tv show Happy Days. Arthur Fonzarelli, The Fonz, dressed in his trademark leather jacket and shorts jumped a shark while water skiing. That episode was thereafter known as the moment Happy Days lost its mojo, it ‘jumped the shark.’ Personally, I think it was when Pinky Tuscadero became a cast member but that’s another story.
Saturday, Donald Trump, and his minions told us somewhere near a million people made a request to attend his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He did his best to make the predictions come true. He preceded the rally a few weeks earlier with a Biblical walk, firings of his perceived enemies, and predictions of a Democratic apocalypse if his silent majority did not show up. Well as it turned out not only was his majority silent they were invisible. Promises were made that President Trump and the Vice President would address the overflow throng of his fans that was predicted to congregate outside the BOK Center in Tulsa. That throng turned out to be a murmur and the President left the venue with his tie between his legs.
The nineteen thousand that was expected to fill the venue with noise, screams, squeals, and cheers was reduced to a dull roar, just over six thousand actually attended. Oh, it was not that Mr. Trump did not bring up the crowd favorites: Barack Obama, the press, Black Lives Matter, the Confederacy, and “Lock her up.” He even tried some new material, testing out a ten-minute monologue about slippery ramps and drinking water. With 120,000 U.S. citizens who have died, due to his incompetence and mismanagement of a world pandemic; the lynching of George Floyd in public view on an American street, his pseudo-Klan rallies may have finally jumped the shark.
Of course, much like his first lies about Inaugural crowd amounts, he is proving again he is a size drama queen. The latest crowd size excuse is that TikTok, K-Pop, and protesters kept the crowd numbers down. The math does not add up Mr. President, and it sounds as if your thinly veiled threats to the demonstrators was really that of a toothless shark.
The Trump team is asserting that the tickets were gobbled up by online groups and that stopped real Trumpers from attending. The problem with that theory is that the tickets were unlimited so no matter how many tickets may have been taken by users of TikTok or K-Pop the ticket distribution had no limits. In other words, the ticket giveaway was infinite. So, infinity minus say 13,000 ( the approximate no-shows) still adds up to infinity so any Trump supporter who was not there was by choice, not a lack of access. As for the excuse that demonstrators scared or coerced the crowd from showing up, Mr. Trump said protesters would be dealt with, “Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!” Tulsa police reported few incidents and no one was denied entrance as a result of the protest. Watch it Mr. Trump some of those sharks may come equipped with freakin’ laser beams.
Vote in 2020 for Change.