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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Here it is: the new PROOF report on Musk. Massive, fully sourced, horrifying. The silver lining is that what Musk is up to and what he wants is becoming clearer.
America is in the shitter because we have people who have never read the Constitution talking about the Constitution, people who do not know what the Second Amendment says talking about the Second Amendment, and people pretending to know what Marxism and socialism are who do not.
Maybe one in 100 people on this f****** hellsite talking about CRT know what it is.
Maybe one in 100 people on this f****** hellsite talking about the Green New Deal know what it is.
MAGA is weakness. It is foisting your stupidity on the world because you simply cannot face it.
Bezos is paying the Trumps $40 million to make a documentary on Melania that no one asked for or wants and is certain to obscure any interesting fact—like her initial immigration status, whether her marriage is a sham, Trump’s affairs—a viewer might want.
Seems like... Bribery?
To put this in perspective—I’ll use myself as an example only because I know my situation best—I wrote the largest number of bestsellers about Trump of any author (tied with Woodward). Do you think Bezos—who follows me on Twitter—would pay $40 million for the rights? Or even $40?
My point isn’t about me. I make no effort to shop the Proof Series rights.
My point is Bezos knows me: and I know, he knows, everyone knows he could get rights to a 3,500-page bestselling epic on the Trumps for 400K—1% of what he’s paying for Melania’s lies—and it won’t happen.
I have no quarrel with Tosca, but she's not objective in this.
Many people are worried about Musk, and my opinion—just as a person, rather than a historian, attorney, journalist, retired professor, editor, author, and biographer of her brother—is that he needs his family's help.
I'm not a doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist; my PhD is nonmedical. But I was also a public defender for years and years, so I have worked for and with and around individuals suffering from mental illness more than most readers will know. Musk is acting in a very troubling way.
His employees came close to calling in a police-conducted wellness check, per a recent book. He has admitted to both being mentally ill and being under medical supervision for it via experimental drug therapy. He has admitted to crippling stress. And he is acting in a manic way.
I legitimately believe Elon Musk may be going mad. I'm a Musk biographer who has been tracking his online behavior for the last two years—and given that he's admitted to all of mental illness, heavy drug use, and crippling stress, it is now reasonable to fear he is deeply unwell.
His private struggles would not be of general concern except they have dramatic public consequences.
His holdings across many civilization-essential industries and the fact that he's the incoming POTUS mean that his madness and increasing incitement of violence endanger us all.
For 14 days more the administration is in a position to take urgent action to protect America from Elon Musk. That could include ending all U.S. contracts with him, filing lawsuits to block his unconstitutional DOGE initiative, and launching new federal and natsec investigations.
1/ What some of you do not realize is that there are a small number of MAGAs who believe, if erroneously, that they are actually pursuing principles.
They do not know what free speech actually entails in a representative democracy but they do believe in what they think it means.
2/ I'm not going to say these people can be redeemed. They can't. They supported a rapist career criminal for President of the United States and an unelected neo-Nazi to be his co-POTUS.
Some things are unforgivable; that alone—had they done nothing else—would be one such thing.