The anti-Trump conservative group known as The Lincoln Project offered an on-point bit of public mockery for Trump’s base this week after a weekend rally in support of participants in the Capitol riot looked like a dud. Hardly anyone at all showed up to the event, with estimates putting the crowd size in the low 100s range. The entirety of the crowd, excluding law enforcement but seemingly including members of the media and counterprotesters, was at just 400 or 450, according to U.S. Capitol Police — meaning that the resounding show of support which organizers may have hoped to achieve did not materialize.
In one post, The Lincoln Project posted an image of a weekend rally participant alongside an image of Scott “Scut” Farkus, a neighborhood bully in the 1980s movie A Christmas Story. Both the rally participant and the actor portraying Farkus were wearing fur hats at the time the images were captured. The rally participant looks, quite simply, ridiculous, and his appearance recalls recent comments from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who criticized the presence in certain Republican circles of “a lot of bored people out there that probably never served a day in their life in the military and get to go play dress-up.” Often, certain corners of the GOP base seem bizarrely obsessed with delirious fantasies of overthrowing the government.
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 18, 2021
In another post from this weekend, The Lincoln Project simply wrote “cute” alongside an image of the sparsely attended Saturday rally in support of the Capitol rioters.
cute pic.twitter.com/ldAcBs5086
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 18, 2021
Notably, Trump proclaimed ahead of the weekend rally that the event was supposedly a “setup,” saying that “if people don’t show up they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a lack of spirit.’ And if people do show up they’ll be harassed.” There’s no particular evidence for his “setup” allegation — in fact, the event was put together by an organization called Look Ahead America, which is led by a former staffer from his own campaign. No matter his suspicions of the rally, Trump has shown affinity for the rioters themselves. In a statement from last week, he proclaimed that Americans’ “hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election.” Obviously, it wasn’t a “protest” in any reasonable sense.
