Taylor Swift Has Nothing on Donald Trump
I’m not sure if President Trump could compete directly with Taylor Swift and fill a 45,000-person stadium, but if he added pyrotechnics and/or dancing girls, he could probably do it.
The one thing he might have difficulty bringing to such an enormous audience though would be his absolute mastery of what I call the “intimate moment,” wherein during his talk he gets a little closer to the microphone and speaks to his audience as if there were only one person that mattered and that was you.
There were plenty of those moments in the nearly two-hour speech he gave recently as the star of the CAGOP Fall 2023 Convention held at the Anaheim Convention Center the weekend of 29/30 September and 1 October.
If you get the chance to attend another of his appearances, I urge you to go. This is what a Donald Trump National Tour event feels like:
Immediately after the ending notes of Lee Greenwood’s “Proud To Be An American” winds down, Mr. Trump picks up the mic, stands at the podium, looks in all directions, smiles, mouths silent “thank you’s” and after mentioning some of the big wigs and/or friends present, begins by taking shots at some of the grimy politicos at the top of the Democrat Party heap: Maxine Waters, “If I said the same kinds of things she has said about me, I’d get the electric chair”; California Congressman Eric Swalwell, “the man who fell in love with a Chinese spy but managed to stay on the intelligence committee anyway”; his “favorite”: California Congressman Adam “Pencil Neck” Schiff, “Crazy” Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, et alia.
Trump had something to say about each, and most of what he does say gets a laugh.
His speech is fiery, funny, informal, informative, and impassioned all at the same time. He holds the audience rapt, and no one leaves as he adds off-the-cuff remarks to his prepared lines.
“Do you mind if I go off-script?” he asks often, immediately answered by a crescendo of “Nooo.”
He attacks the 2020 election, blaming arbitrary and unaccounted numbers of mail-in ballots for much of the corruption, noting that even France banned mail-in ballots except for the elderly and infirm. He adds that “They [the French] recently had an election; thirty-six million people voted on the same day and by 10 o’clock that same day, they had a winner… There’s only one reason they [Democrats] don’t want voter ID: they want to cheat.”
Trump analyzes the situation in the country: a broken border, high inflation, out-of-control crime wave… “We’ve totally lost our place in the world; pretty soon we’re going to lose our dollar”, he says.
He talks glowingly of his “big, beautiful golf course” on the oceanfront in Palos Verde, California. “I always say I have the ocean and Pebble Beach has the bay,” which gets a laugh.
He makes fun of the water situation in California. He says there is plenty of water, but Democrats don’t want to do anything about it. He laughs and explains that “rich people in Beverly Hills have paid millions of dollars of taxes and they’re told to hurry up when they take showers. Which is why,” he adds, “rich people from Beverly Hills generally don’t smell so good.”
Big laughs from this California crowd.
On forest fires:
“I was with a gentleman, a very top person in Austria. He said ‘Sir, we have more flammable trees than you do on your coast. We don’t have forest fires; we have live trees.’”
Trump notes that the Austrians “take care of the land; they pick up the dead trees,” noting that “trees don’t burn very easily unless they’re dead. California doesn’t do that.”
On Joe Biden:
“[Biden’s] got a consultant who thinks he looks good in a bathing suit,” Trump jokes, then asks his audience: “You think he looks good in a bathing suit?”
The audience throws him an enormous groaning “Noooo!”
Calling Biden “the most corrupt president in history,” he makes fun of his inability to leave a stage: “I’ve never been on this stage before,” Trump jokes, “but when I look to my left, there’s a stair; when I look to the right there’s another stair.” Then Trump breaks out into a routine pretending to be Biden looking left, looking right, and looking behind him before giving up in bewilderment.
Big laughs and guffaws greet the skit.
On the 2024 election:
He doesn’t believe Biden will make it to Election Day and asks the audience if anybody thinks he’s going to make it.
Another big “Nooo.”
He lambastes California’s “all-electric” push.
Tells a funny story about getting in a truck with a truck driver in an electric vehicle. “Boy, that ride was the greatest,” he says with a smile. “For the first ten, fifteen minutes you’re so happy. Then, the driver is in a state of trauma. He’s worried. He’s wondering where the next charging station is and if he’ll make it there.”
Trump says he has “no problem with electric; you should be able to buy whatever you want,” but then relates how Biden wants the U.S. to also fly electric fighter jets, “so that when we go into enemy territory, we’re [environmentally correct] before we blast the shit out of everything.”
Big laughs.
He continues, “[Electric] fighter jets are a little bit better for the environment as we’re attacking some country and dropping bombs all over the place, but there is one problem: they’re about 15% less effective. You know what 15% is for a fighter jet?
Pause.
“The difference between being shot down and shooting the other guy down.”
He notes that one tank of diesel fuel can take an 18-wheeler 2,000 miles before needing to be refilled. “An electric truck will go 300 maybe 400 miles, and, by the way, it takes a long time to juice ‘em up.”
He promises that under a Trump administration “gasoline-fired engines will be allowed but child sexual mutilation will be banned.”
Big cheers.
He tells a story about a male weightlifter who had decided to “transition” into a woman and competed with the daughter of a friend of his who had hoped to win the medal. The transitioning man won easily. Trump suggests that biological men shouldn’t be allowed to compete against biological women
Trump’s delivery was spot-on hilarious.
He takes on the current nationwide crime wave and ends with “Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving.”
Big sustained applause.
He defends his wall and gives details about how and why it was built the way it was.
He laughs and says he only talks about polls when they make him look good, then tells us the good news about the latest Washington Post poll that has him up by ten points over Biden.
He takes credit for helping Ron DeSantis win the governorship of Florida (“Without me, he was dead”) and notes how disloyal he believes DeSantis was when, four years later, in 2020, Trump asks if he’ll get his endorsement for president “and he wouldn’t do it.”
As he wraps it up, promising to make America great again, the crowd moves toward him en masse in search of a handshake, signature, smile, or glance. If you’ve ever been on a golf course at the end of a major tournament with a sea of fans spilling onto the fairway behind the about-to-be winner as he approaches the 18th hole, you have an idea of what that’s like.
Democrat operatives and lawyers (but I repeat myself) outsmarted and out-maneuvered Republicans in the 2020 election and again in 2022, but presumably the GOP has caught up with most of the shenanigans that caused those losses. As much as you may hate the idea of harvesting votes of those too lazy or stupid to get in line to vote on their own on a stipulated Election Day, it is now a must. Republicans have to pay people to collect and even help strangers fill out ballots and drop them in various locations or mail them in as required. If that means bothering grandpa or grandma at their retirement home, hospital, or Alzheimer’s ward, so be it. They’ll have to pester restaurant owners and small business owners during busy mealtimes and work hours, factory workers during their breaks, policemen, firemen, and lifeguards on patrol, golfers on the driving ranges, and military members on duty to get them to fill out their ballots and hand them over for delivery. It's sad but it’s the way of our elections until something changes, so it’s got to be done.
And after spending those raucous and thoroughly enjoyable two hours or so with our former president as part of the rat pack of journalists covering his speech, I can’t help but feel that Mr. Trump is not only tanned and ready to resume his presidency, but that he should.
The best thing that can happen in November 2024 is the resounding victory of a Trump/DeSantis ticket helps Make America Great Again.
You have just said what MILLIONS are thinking.
A friend of mine just saw him in person and was blown away -- in a good way.