This past Saturday, former President Donald Trump held a rally at a venue called The Farm in Selma, North Carolina — and according to reporting from the North Carolina publication known as The News & Observer, attendance at the event was thousands below attendance levels for a Trump rally at the very same venue ahead of the 2016 presidential election. In an update from just after 7 p.m. local time on the night of the rally, the publication stated: “Former President Donald Trump is taking the stage at The Farm in Selma in front of what appears to be roughly 1,000 to 2,000 people — substantially fewer than the 15,000 who attended his rally at the same venue in the days before 2016’s presidential election.” What a clown-show.
This juncture isn’t the first recent occasion that a Trump rally hasn’t exactly excelled in terms of crowd size. In March, Trump visited Georgia for a rally supporting candidates he’s endorsed there, including former Sen. David Perdue (R), who’s running for governor. Just before 8 p.m. local time on the night of the embarrassing event, Georgia reporter Greg Bluestein identified the crowd at the Trump rally as among the smallest he’d seen at such an event. “I’ve covered more than two dozen Trump rallies around the nation. This is the smallest crowd I’ve seen at a rally of his in Georgia since he won the 2016 election — significantly smaller than the crowd in Perry in September,” Bluestein said. In another evening post, Bluestein characterized attendees as displaying strikingly low levels of enthusiasm. “This crowd is hardly applauding. Not the same sort of enthusiasm I’ve seen at other Trump rallies,” the reporter explained.
Trump's North Carolina rally is news, in that a lunatic is not only a former POTUS but the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee. But it's also not news, in that he's out there saying pretty much the stuff over and over. His material has barely changed over the past 4 years.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 10, 2022
The Trump event in Georgia was notable for another reason: while there, the disgraced former commander-in-chief claimed that (when in office as president) he told a fellow world leader involved in NATO that the U.S. wouldn’t honor its treaty obligations associated with the alliance to participate in the defense of a member country in the event of an attack by Russia if that country had unpaid “bills.” Besides the issue that representing NATO members as somehow living large with unpaid bills doesn’t accurately reflect the facts, Russian leadership would no doubt love to hear of the possibility of a U.S. president essentially abandoning allies to Russian aggression. Trump could run again, a prospect he’s bringing up as he carries on with whatever it is he’s doing: “After asking the crowd if it would like to see him run again, Trump supporters responded with the loudest cheer of the day,” The News & Observer reported from that recent North Carolina rally. There’s a lot riding on the outcome of the next election.
Hello from the Trump rally in Selma, North Carolina. pic.twitter.com/n6HbJ6iEnv
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) April 9, 2022
