Thread by @LauraJedeed

Spending hours of my one and only life to watch the Alabama Trump rally whist the beginning of a hurricaine howls outside my window

Making a thread about it because I want everyone else to suffer also

It's good for me to watch these because it's very easy to forget the relentless message jackhammered into the Donald Trump right: the Democrats are the enemy

Not wrong, not misguided, not even just dangerous: the literal enemy attempting to destroy America

It's always the same thing. The message doesn't change. People project their own boredom at the same message onto the Trump supporters, but that's not how it works at all. The consistency of the message makes lies seem not just true, but completely obvious

"Godless, evil, amoral socialist democrats are on the march. And we have to fight back!"

A literal quote from the old white dude giving a speech right now. This is their view of the opposition party. This is why violence will continue

(if you're here from the American Conservative pointing to my Afghanistan speech, welcome to business as usual on this Twitter account)

"It's not just the socialist we have to beat, it's the weak-kneed Republican RINOs...we've got a 2-front war!"

This is the language of war, directed against everyone who doesn't agree with them

There can be no "civility" with a party like this. Do not Both Sides the issue

The crowd screams "Trump Trump Trump!" in a very normal fashion

If you are wondering whether they're hammering the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, the answer is yes, obviously

The crowd screams "Fix it now!" as the old white guy promises them that the Arizona audit is coming

Oh my god OK this is some creepy-ass shit

The old white guy finished speaking and the crowd was cheering and then someone screamed "Ten...HUT!!!" and the crowd fucking went DEAD QUIET

Trumpets blast

It's the "To the Color" bugle call

Once over, a Patton quote blasted over the speakers to the silent audience.

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

"All real Americans love the sting of battle!"

Dude this is an entire fucking Patton speech it's been going for like 3 minutes at least, this is some SHIT

This is new

Here's the speech they're playing. It's actually from the Patton MOVIE, which carries some kind of symbolic meaning re: media and violence

This is a speech about destroying your enemies

Following a speech about how the Democrats are the enemy

americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/…

JESUS, and Trump comes on after THAT

no weird disco, he comes on after a PATTON SPEECH

YALL THIS IS SOME NEW SHIT

(if you don't obsessively watch Trump's speeches: he ALWAYS comes on after the same playlist of Abba, YMCA, and similar. It's always the same playlist)

(this is deeply significant)

Trump claiming no one is airing his speech while I watch his speech on C-SPAN

But how would his audience know?

Trump immediately claims the election was stolen, the pivots to Afghanistan being bad, then endorses Mo Brooks, I'm guessing that's the asshole who was talking earlier but don't know for sure

Trump asks the audience if they liked the General Patton speech. Cheers

"Good, because I think we're all tired of the 'woke' generals in America today"

And we're talking about how woke generals fucked up Afghanistan, oh boy

Biden's sins (per Trump) listed out:

*Afghanistan
*Open borders during COVID
*Crime waves in large cities run by Democrats
*Only Republicans prosecuted for Crime
*Continued COVID shut down
*Failed to stop the virus

Biden's Sins (Per Trump) Continued:

*No more energy independence (false)
*Out of control inflation
*The Green New Deal (engineered by AOC: "A real Beauty" he says sarcastically)
*Disassembled military. "Our military is being given to the enemy!" Nonsensical claim, but big boos

(Why am I livetweeting this and giving Trump oxygen? I think it's good to keep an eye on what's simmering under the surface. Millions of people BELIEVE this shit, and it's important to remember that)

Trump calls the Afghanistan pull-out "disgraceful" and "embarrassing"

Really hammers home the "embarrassing."

Feelings of deep shame, and the idea that violence can restore this stolen honor, is central to fascist lines of thought

Trump is spending kind of a shocking amount of time on the idea that Democrats embarrass America. The idea that people respected America while he was president, and laughs at America when Democrats are elected

Personal honor tied to political honor transforms voters into addicts

Trump asserting that the soldiers had "total military control" of Afghanistan, which is really very funny

Trump paints a lurid picture of another 9/11. The Taliban flag flying over the US Embassy. Hammering home the deep shame that necessarily leads to feelings of impotent rage in response. The kind of thing that prompts explosive violence

"I was talking to a general named Kaine, who knows, he might not even be on my side, you never know with generals these days"

A subtle way of saying that patriotic and good generals are on the side of Trump. That opposing him is treason

"Do you think that General Patton was woke? I don't think so....he was the exact opposite"

"You know what woke means? It means you're a loser"

"Everything woke turns to shit, OK"

Yes, that is a direct quote, and the audience has been cheering for like 30 seconds

what even are words

"Our women's soccer team were supposed to win, but they went woke!"

Say what you want about Trump, he is a very funny man

Trump calls taking down statues of confederate generals "destroying our culture and our heritage" hand to god

"By the way we have great generals. Great generals. The generals you see on TV aren't the ones who are great"

Greatness = approval of Trump

There's a very consistent logic to this world

Trump is telling a very long (for him) story about the mothers and fathers of dead servicemen talking about their child, then breaking down entirely at the sight of their coffins arriving at Dover Air Force base

Emphasizing that it was all for nothing

Can't argue with that

Now calling wounded vets "the greatest people our country has ever had" and THAT I can argue with

The cult of the veteran has to stop. It's unhealthy for a country and it's not super fun for veterans either

If you watch Trump speeches obsessively, you know that his speeches are disjointed to the point of stream of consciousness. He meanders from subject to subject

So it's very noteworthy that he's been talking about Afghanistan exclusively for a WHILE

Trump is talking up the Taliban's fighting prowess, saying that Afghanistan is the reason Russia collapsed, which, I'm not a scholar of the Soviet Union but I think it was a little more complicated

Is he trying to make our defeat more paletable?

No, I see what Trump is doing here--he's making the argument that the Biden administration should have seen the rapid Taliban sweep coming

I mean.........yeah

"They're tough. Everyone is tough. But we're tougher. But nobody would know it when you look at what's happening!"

Things have gotten weird

Trump is saying that he asked a 5-year-old child whether Biden should have pulled the military out before the civilians and equipment or after

"But they didn't want me to tell that story, they thought it wasn't an appropriate story, but it's true"

Trump recalling fondly the "I have a button"/"I have a bigger button and my button works!" North Korea exchange, to cheers

Then says that it turned into a "lovefest" which also got cheers

It sounds ridiculous and crazy TO YOU. To his audience, it's endearing

Trump comes across, to his supporters, like a crazy old uncle who's super fun to have beers with and is maybe a little bonkers and certainly ridiculous but a real good guy and a favorite relative

Trump recommends taking the vaccine--and there are boos!

"It's ok, you've got your freedoms, but I took the vaccines. If it doesn't work, you'll be the first to know"

The audience isn't having it. Sometimes you see the radicalization process outpace the radicalizer in real time

Trump desperately pivoting to bashing Faucci in an effort to save the moment for himself

I really wish I was there live because of course I fucking do, I'm sick

But more than that, because I'd like to see if the chill I'm feeling from the crowd through the TV after Trump told the audience to take vaccines is my imagination or reality

Trump saying some stuff about making South Korea pay for the army protecting them from North Korea. Claims to have saved SK from NK because he gets along with Kim Jong Un

Trump singles out a guy in the crowd with a Trump jacket and asks him how many rallies he's been to

"30?"

"Nah, it's gotta be more than that" Trump says

Says that some women in the crowd have been to 96 rallies

"It's unpleasant to talk about it, but isn't this the greatest place in the country to be--a Trump rally?"

Cheers

Trump is, um...talking about how Biden fell down the Air Force 1 steps more times than he did

Defending his fall on the slippery ramp, saying he knew he was going to slip because of his leather shoes, I don't even know

He's still talking about presidents falling

Trump's fall on the Air Force 1 clearly haunts him

He says he called the first lady and said he made a great speech and she said "The TV is showing you falling down a ramp!"

He used a really bitchy voice for Melania too, it's amazing

We're at the part of the Trump speech where I start to sorta zone out

I've talked about this in a previous tweet thread, but this is part of Trump's appeal

https://twitter.com/LauraJedeed/status/1366195504279863299?s=20

He's talking about immigration and the border, if you were wondering

It's the same old stuff: record numbers of people coming in, disaster, open border

"a lot of them coming in from the middle east"

"Many of these people are hardened criminals, murderers"

(personal note: this human would not be alive if immigrants didn't come in from the middle east: my father immigrated from Syria in the 1970s)

A big shoutout to border patrol and law enforcement: Trump's personal army

I remember when he put together an ad-hoc army with ICE and DHS to "quell" protests in Portland last summer

Parallel organizations always remind me of the Nazi party in the 1920s

He's bragging about telling Honduras and Guatemala that he'd resume aid if they took their immigrants back, and then not paying them. Laughter

"Why don't Trump supporters care that Trump is a crook" people sometimes ask: they DO care. They think it's AWESOME

"We've understood, in America First, that immigration security is national security" -Trump

America First is a slogan from the 1930s by people who thought Germany had some good ideas, and trust and believe the people who use it today know its legacy

Trump touting the travel ban, which prevented people from coming into the country for "countries that we know are bad and they send bad people to us"

I mean, I'm sure Trump wouldn't think I'm very good so maybe he's onto something with including Syria on that list

"This is a sick culture and our country is a disaster and it's going to die before your very eyes if this craziness isn't stopped in so many ways"

-Trump, talking about letting refugees into America

Trump says "our nation is being destroyed by the enemy within" to link his rant about immigrants to his rant about the 2020 election

This rhetoric inspires a subconscious emotional link between the imagined menace of violent immigrants to the imagined theft of the election

It is so, so boring to listen to Trump rattle off lie after lie about instances of election fraud, and that's kind of the point

Here's how to make a lie feel true:

*repeat it a million times
*make it feel as boring and simple as a middle-school textbook

"Remember, I am not the person trying to undermine American democracy, I am the person trying to save American democracy"

Long cheer for that one

This is probably as close as he's going to get to talking about January 6th

Trump talking about victories in the House and Senate, I missed whether in 2018 or 2020, doesn't matter. What matters is that he says: "I hate to say it, but it was because of me." Points to himself

Message: I AM the party

Mo Brooks, endorsed Alabama senate candidate, invited to come up to the podium

"Thank you to the former president, and the future president of the United States of America"

"I am here to announce the second coming of President Donald J Trump!"

Huge cheer

Interesting phrasing

Crowd chants "We love you!" at Trump for about 15 seconds

"Thank you," he says. "I love you too"

While Trump talks about how big the crowd is and how the media isn't showing the whole crowd and etc can we just take a second to really take in the fact that someone just called a 2024 Trump victory "the second coming"?

While Trump performs endless shoutouts to every Republican in Alabama, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Mike MyPillow Lindell, I'm just sitting here pondering the Book of Revelations

Trump is, incredibly, claiming that he "handed 3 vaccines" to Biden and yet the virus is surging

to an audience of anti-vaxxers

I mean they don't seem to mind but it is very funny

Trump calling Biden out for the few things he's done to stop climate change while the edge a fucking literal goddamn hurricaine hammers against my windows

it's been an hour and twenty minutes of this speech jesus christ i am too sober for this honestly

Trump furious about people saying he didn't do well in the suburbs in 2020 when he nobly stopped low-income housing for them. Insists women voted for him in droves

I'm co-writing an article with @mk_hawthorne about NIMBYism right now! It's bad actually to not build housing!

@mk_hawthorne blah blah witch hunt *yawn*

@mk_hawthorne We are at the end of the speech. Trump talks about America's many enemies, internal and external

"This nation does not belong to them, this nation belongs to you. This is your home! This is your heritage!"

"We will defeat woke radicalism and a continuation of communism!"

@mk_hawthorne Trump reminds the audience that America defeated fascism, which is really very funny

"We're not going to be laughed at anymore," Trump says, encapsulating the entirety of his platform and appeal in a single sentence

There are people who fear being laughed at more than anything else. There are a LOT of people like that

"WE--not me--WE ran for president"

God that's a brilliant sentence. Just masterful populism

Trump makes his supporters feel like an integral part of him. Which means you sink or swim with him

Trump calls this rally "the greatest rally in the history of our country," his movement "probably the greatest movement in the history of the world"

"Call it Make America Great Again, call it Make America First, call it whatever you want"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_F…

Trump signs off as he always does:

"We will Make America Powerful Again"
We will Make America Wealthy Again
We wilL Make America Strong Again
We Will Make America Proud Again
We will Make AMerica Safe Again
And we will Make America Great Again"

It's over

Usually Trump walks off to "YMCA," but it's "Sweet Home Alabama," get it, because it's Alabama, so like...

FINAL ANALYSIS:

*Trump is moving in a decidedly more militant direction. The use of Patton's speech as an introduction is a night-and-day transition from disco. Trump is playing to national shame over our failure in Afghanistan, whether he means to or not

*If Trump doesn't come out against vaccines in the next couple days, he has more of a moral compass than I ever could have imagined. That frosty silence wounded him to his core--a nightmare scenario for the man

*Barring a health crisis, Trump is ABSOLUTELY going to run in 2024