Donald Trump loves rallies. Everyone can see how they energize him, how the crowd’s applause encourages him to ditch the hackneyed prose of his speechwriters and go on wild riffs, how the music and cheering are like water to a parched man. Tonight, at the end of a two-day rally billed as a Republican “midterm convention,” Trump was visibly exhilarated.
But he also protested too much, in the process revealing some political as well as personal fears and insecurities. Right at the outset, Trump made a reference to the arena and how packed it was, apparently stung by images of empty seats during the first night of the festivities. (He blamed those pictures on a dishonest press that was taking pictures of seats left by people going to the bathroom.) He returned to the crowd size issue near the end of the evening, going on at length about the packed seats and boxes. He also made life harder for Republican candidates who might try to get some distance from him by repeatedly stressing that he, Donald Trump, really is on the ballot, even if his name isn’t listed.
A confident president does not hold a faux convention. A man who feels in control of his political future does not promise every American a $5,000 bounty if his party wins the election. A man who thinks he’s winning a war does not boast that America “controls the Strait of Trump” a day after news reports revealed damage to U.S. military assets in an Iranian strike.
And a leader who believes in his voters does not make them recite weird pledges in the middle of a speech.
Trump—apparently in one of his detours away from the teleprompter—was struck by the possibility that his own people wouldn’t vote. He stopped and demanded they follow him in a pledge. “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States,” he began, as the audience repeated his words, “that loves us so much he can’t even breathe…”
I must pause here and assure you that I am not making any of this up. Trump continued by riffing about promising to “bring friends and family” to vote, even if it involved cheating. By this point, those in the audience had given up and all of them were gamely doing their best to laugh and placate the president. Trump got them back on track with a pledge to vote—and then again detoured, saying that they should vote, even if it’s to vote for Democrats, before adding that no one in the room would do that—a safe assumption at a convention of loyalists.
(The mindlessness of the whole thing was reminiscent of what the comedian Steve Martin captured with a revealing prank he used to pull on his audiences in the late 1970s—the Non-Conformist Oath. They would repeat his vows to be different and unique, without knowing where he was going with the bit. Then Martin would shout: “I promise not to repeat things other people say!” The crowd would start to chant back, of course, and then dissolve into laughter. Trump, too, asked his crowd to repeat his words without knowing what was coming. Unlike Martin’s audiences, the GOP attendees did not seem to get that it’s creepy to uncritically repeat whatever someone else tells you to say.)
Trump ended this fractured pledge by asking the crowd to affirm that they would vote, “so help me God.” The president may have realized that asking people to involve the Almighty in a promise to go to the polls was a bit much, and so he quickly pivoted to joking that if you don’t vote, you go to hell, and as a president who cares, he doesn’t want that for anyone. The prospect of ending up in perdition for not voting isn’t exactly a knee-slapper, but lightening the moment allowed Trump to end the cringe and move on.
This vow was a weird moment in a short speech of weird moments. Trump basically speed-ran the same speech he gave the night before, tumbling through promises of money and his usual (and sometimes factually wifty) boasts about various policies. Finally, he decided that it was time to just hand over the show to Christopher Macchio, the opera singer.
But wait. Did you know that Macchio is better than the great Luciano Pavarotti? You see, the president continued, he knew Pavarotti, Pavarotti was a great friend of his, but Macchio is better than Pavarotti. And Macchio, Trump went on, was too modest to admit it, but…
You get the picture. Trump just couldn’t bring himself to leave the stage. Finally, the president shrugged, almost as if someone off camera had given him the “wrap it up” sign, and said “Vote!” and left.
Trump is likely well aware of the dire situation his party faces. But once again, in front of what he stressed was a packed arena, he could not help but make the election about himself, demanding that Americans vote not based not on their assessment of the Republicans who are actually running, but on their loyalty to him, personally. Democrats could not have asked for a better closer for the evening.