Here's the top deck at Trump's Thursday rally in Manchester, NH. It's almost empty. Trump claimed that not only was the arena full, but *48,000* people—what you're seeing is about 8,500 to 9,500—had wanted to come see him. He also falsely said dozens waited *60 hours* to get in.
PS/ Note also—all for accuracy's sake—that 60% of the floor seating is taken up by journalists, and that there are scattered empty seats even in the lower deck (suggesting that those on the floor might have been able to fit in those seats or in the lowest rows of the upper deck).
MEDIA/ Note that I harp on this for a reason: Trump is in *deep* trouble in New Hampshire, where he's underwater (-26) in popularity *and* couldn't draw a crowd bigger than this one—and many of those media interviewed were out-of-staters from Massachusetts.
He should be worried.
NOTE/ This disappointing crowd in New Hampshire comes at a time when Trump and the GOP are deciding whether to put on their New Hampshire ticket a man who's been accused of physically and sexually assaulting women and got into an altercation in the White House: Corey Lewandowski.
NOTE2/ A friend outside the arena during the event said there were 1,000 to 2,000 there. When gauging the deputy fire marshal's claim there were 11,500 inside, a) see the pic (and know 11,500 means only 270 empty seats) and b) consider he said there were "8,000 to 9,000" outside.
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I want to mention a couple of items that lay outside this already sprawling report.
First, that this war about to become illegal under U.S. law—and long illegal under international law—is in the midst of causing a global economic collapse, energy crisis, food crisis, and more.
The UAE is leaving OPEC. Saudi Arabia is leaving LIV. Israel is annexing almost 10% of Lebanon. Gas prices are out of control, so much so that Trump stans on cable news are simply making up numbers all of us know are false. The jet fuel crisis will shortly become a travel crisis.
Everyone needs to read the 2020 bestseller Proof of Corruption, in which the man pictured below is a key antagonist trying to steal the 2020 election for Trump.
As a journalist I've spilled more words on crooked Trump lawyer Joe diGenova and his lawyer partner Victoria Toensing than any author writing in English. For years I told U.S. media to watch these two, as their specialty is Roger Stone-style election ratfuckery.
Now here we are.
The job diGenova had in the 2020 election was to regularly meet secretly at a Trump hotel restaurant with a team tasked with manufacturing fake pro-Biden foreign election interference.
Trump picking him to prosecute supposed election interference is a five-alarm national fire.
NOTE: If Kash Patel indeed brings manufactured criminal cases over the 2020 election this week—something he knows a lot about, as he sought fake evidence from Kremlin agents to steal the 2020 election for Trump—it’s *not about 2020*.
It’s about rigging elections *going forward*.
As detailed in PROOF OF COUP (2023), the 2020-born Waldron Plot—which Patel was aware of—held that an obscure DHS reg lets Trump seize voting machines and take control of elections if evidence of foreign tampering is found.
Patel is expert at faking such evidence. So stay tuned.
Patel worked as hard as anyone in America to try to steal the 2020 election—via the clandestine BLT Prime Team whose activities are detailed in the national bestseller PROOF OF CORRUPTION (2020) and would be as infamous as the Watergate plumbers if America had a functional media.
I keep saying, as a Trump biographer, that this man holds deeply deranged beliefs—on almost every subject—he cannot be talked out of by experts, to the point that it can accurately be said that he lives in his own warped reality. 25th this man immediately. theguardian.com/us-news/2026/a…
Consider the implications here.
Biden knew that finding a cure for cancer was such a difficult task that it needs a whole-of-government initiative. He started one.
Trump secretly believes he knows the cure for cancer but everyone around him has to hide it because it's *insane*.
Now consider second-level implications. Trump is president of the United States and has the largest megaphone on Earth. Cancer is one of the biggest killers known to humankind. Trump thinks he knows the cure but won't discuss it with America. Why? Because he knows he's a grifter.
1. The truth should be worked out via legal process. 2. Dems can't have anyone facing such allegations as a candidate. 3. MAGAs wouldn't care about this; that's immaterial. 4. Politics is informing how some folks are responding; that's also immaterial.
That is, it's possible to think in terms of three distinct spheres—legal, political, moral—at once. Legally, there's nothing to say till all this is resolved in court. Politically, we know that, true or false, allegations affect who's viable. Morally, MAGAs are hypocritical scum.
Who we believe is legally immaterial; it's posturing. We don't have all the facts. I'd say the same of any politician posturing morally now; don't confuse your cynical politics with morality.
But yes—Trump should have exited the race when he faced his *67* different allegations.
The torrent of lies coming from Karoline Leavitt right now is breathtaking
1 Iran has two navies; only one—the far smaller one—was destroyed
2 Half of Iran's launchers are intact
3 Iran held back its small air force—it wasn't destroyed
4 There's been no impact on Iran's nuclear capabilities
5 Only .3% of Iran's army was neutralized
6 The Strait is closed
7 There hasn't been regime change
8 U.S. casualties are over 800
9 There's no secret new 10-point Iranian peace plan, just the old one
10 Regular Iranian missile strikes continue
11 U.S. and Israeli interceptors arsenals are in a dire state
12 This war has wasted tens of billions