Over one million people have requested to attend President Trump’s campaign rally this Saturday in Tulsa. The Bank of Oklahoma Center only seats 19,000, but a major exodus is underway. Low estimates of the potential human convergence on the Sooner State’s second-largest city is 100,000, but some predict the number of people who eventually throng to the Trump-inspired temporary 2020 Mecca might reach 500,000. The population of Tulsa is just over 396,000.
What we have here is a populist, nationalist, America-first political Woodstock. Yes, there will be music. No word whether Ted Nugent will take the stage, but he should. Imagine “Cat Scratch Fever” in this environment.
It is taken as inarguable truth now that COVID’s pent-up, lockdown realities and microbiological uncertainties contributed mightily to the angst behind the shocking civil unrest we’ve seen in Blue cities in the wake of George Floyd’s controversial demise. A similar dynamic of anticipation and frustration will now manifest in a grand show of Red State support for the president.
Here comes the vast machinery of the professional left to throw rhetorical wet blankets of every fabric at Trump’s General MacArthur-esque “I shall return” moment. Such nervous-nellie hand-wringing over the coronavirus fate of Trump supporters won’t work to scare the Trump Country faithful away or impugn his motives. It is laughable.
These are the same people who stamped both open approval on protesters and tacit approval on rioters, looters, and violent extremists who took to the streets and pressed sweating (and at times bloody) flesh. The same reporters who stood in front of burning businesses and talked about mostly peaceful protests. Now they are bending over backward to kiss their own butts in attempts to reconcile the “protests” while raising faux alarm over the rally. Wanting it both ways, they paint risks associated with the unrest as “worth it,” while denigrating Trump’s rally as an irresponsibly partisan and unnecessary endeavor.
They want to be the final arbiters of what kinds of gatherings can and can’t happen based on the sociopolitical impetus that inspires the gathering.
As Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen told a clammed-up Fox News contributor Juan Williams on The Story with Martha MacCallum this week, “You don’t get to decide that.”
Some of the lefty so-called experts are now saying that yes, in hindsight, they had concerns about the protests in terms of possible transmission, but that the Trump rally, because it is indoors, is much worse. What is left unsaid is that because it’s Trump, it’s worse.
There may be some truth to the indoor/outdoor paradigm. But with anti-Trump credibility thoroughly squandered by rank leftist hypocrisy, try selling it on the streets outside the BOK Center.
Let’s look at some other truths, hard truths that Trump supporters fully understand, and are willing by their participation in this event to confront.
You can contract contagious illness both at an outdoor protest march or an indoor campaign rally. There are reports of people who participated in the unrest having contracted the illness. Even with masks (apparently optional—we’ll see how many rally-goers wear them), sanitizer, temperature-taking upon entry, and other preventative measures in place, the possibility of indoor transmission is probably higher. And it must be stated that Trump supporters are preponderantly older than urban protesters, rioters, looters, and extremists, and would–theoretically at least–be at higher risk for a dire prognosis if infected with the coronavirus.
On the other hand, who actually is more likely to carry the virus?
The state of Oklahoma has been exemplary in its response to COVID-19. It has officially recorded 9,354 cases, 7,071 recoveries, and 366 deaths. New York state had 952 deaths on May 6. It might not be a wholly fair comparison, but, all things considered, an indoor Trump rally in Oklahoma is very probably a safer environment than a mass outdoor protest in New York City.
That’s probably why you’re not going to hear Mayor de Blasio, or any other Blue city mayors who allowed groups like Antifa to run rampant, speaking out against the Tulsa rally. They do not have standing to say a damn thing.
So, let the first of a series of Trump rallies begin. It’s going to be just like old times out there. As Rush Limbaugh writes in his June newsletter: “Make American great again…again!
Which brings us to our final hard truth. We don’t go here out of negativism, but to countenance every possible outcome, including a potentially sad outcome. Someone, or more than just one person, might contract the coronavirus at the rally. Someone, or more than just one person, might die of a case of coronavirus they contract at the rally. These are very high stakes, ladies and gentlemen.
If that happens, the professional left will lay unforgivable blame at the feet of the Trump administration, and they will milk that tragic eventuality with every tool and weapon in their arsenal. But they’ve already blamed the Trump administration for everything. They’ve already prevaricatingly blamed him for thousands of coronavirus deaths, when it is clear that many of those aforementioned Blue city mayors are egregiously culpable. Their double-dealing tropes and failed accusations will fail again.
There are waivers in the registration process for those wishing to attend the rally. Supporters will mourn the loss of any patriot who succumbs to COVID as a result of his or her attendance at this or any other Trump rally.
And then it’s back to business, the business of getting Donald Trump reelected and stopping the un-American left from ascending to power.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member