When not using his teleprompter, former president Donald Trump is always at his least controllable, and his rally on Saturday afternoon in Dayton, Ohio, was a perfect example.
The purpose of the gathering, which took place at the Dayton Air Show’s house, was to help local businessman and car dealership tycoon Bernie Moreno win Tuesday’s rapidly approaching Senate primary. Running for Congress a second time,
Mr. Moreno is hoping that receiving Mr. Trump’s endorsement will help him overcome his opponents in the Republican field. The few polling that is available indicates that the contest is close, most likely with only ten points separating the three front-runners.
The favorite of Mr. Trump has a slight but steady advantage.
But the focus of Saturday’s protest was anything but Bernie Moreno. During the course of many hours at the gathering, The Independent saw exactly one sign endorsing the prospective senator, and none of the numerous vendors arranged along the approach to the airfield were selling any.
That’s not to say he wasn’t discussed at all; in fact, after making an embarrassing about-face on the matter, current Senator JD Vance, a staunch Trump supporter, issued a strong appeal to bring him back up in the upper chamber, while Mr. Trump made a mocking plea for him to win on Tuesday. However, the time allotted for the ostensibly-important man, whose election is in three days, was still superseded by Mr. Trump’s own vitriol toward Joe Biden and the Democrats for blocking him in 2020 and his own campaign for a second term.
And boy, was it a painful subject. Regarding this matter,
Mr. Trump virtually deviated from his scheduled speech, calling his political rivals “inhumans” in several instances. As he delivered his most recent tirade against illegal immigration, he would conjure up the same dehumanizing images, this time pointing the finger at the influx of people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The former president sarcastically remarked,
“I imagine the Congo’s a very nice place,” while repeating, “They’re coming in from Africa.”
In many ways, the speech was typical of Trump, and it was only unusual in that it revealed his increasing incapacity to express his more frightening impulses in language that would be acceptable to the political establishment.
The fact that the event was so modest might have been its most noteworthy feature. The catastrophe took happened approximately one hour from Columbus rather than in the middle of a large population center. Overall, the size of Mr. Trump’s Saturday crowd seemed to be significantly smaller than that of his previous rallies; based on eyeball estimates, the gathering seemed to have roughly doubled the number of people who attended former rival Nikki Haley’s farewell rally in
her home state of South Carolina prior to that state’s primary election, possibly as few as a thousand. The number was unquestionably smaller—in the range of thousands—than what turned up for Mr. Trump’s previous rally in the state, where he supported JD Vance at an arena in Youngstown two years prior.
The Independent saw as at least a few hundred Trump supporters left the event while the former president was still speaking, which only served to exacerbate the situation. Many attributed their complaints to the chilly weather at the outdoor gathering; one woman said quite frankly that she “need[ed] a beer.” Even after the event was over, there were still people who just wanted to get ahead of the traffic.
To be fair, this was an outdoor rally in late February on a windy day.
numerous of his most ardent supporters stood outside for hours to see the once-and-possibly-future president, despite the numerous good reasons not to. A young woman stated to The Independent that at around six in the morning, the first chairs with Trump supporters arranged in a line appeared.
However, if Saturday’s performance was any guide to the remainder of the campaign trail, Mr. Trump is seriously lacking in enthusiasm, especially from independents and non-fans (or superfans). As the race progresses, he will likely draw hundreds,
if not thousands, of fans. However, the majority of those thousands will be his most devoted supporters; his popularity among the general public is dwindling.
It’s completely unclear whether this trend indicates that the Trump train is actually slowing down or if it’s simply a speed bump before he upends the DC elite once more in November. However, a Democrat who observed the former president’s presence on Saturday from the outside may leave somewhat reassured about the kind of candidate Donald Trump is putting forth and the kind of people he can still mobilize.