For former president Donald Trump, optics are everything, you put something out there and repeat it enough it becomes the truth forever. Like the fact he said he was a billionaire beholding to no one when in fact he entered the white house four hundred and eighty-five million dollars in debt. Regardless of if you give people the actual names of the banks that reconfigured that debt once he left office they refuse to believe. The debt was offset when he entered office but came due upon exiting the presidency. Since large banks within the US refused to work with him because of prior bankruptcies, he changed the Volker Rule in the Dodd Frank Act that allowed smaller banks to loan bigger sums to individuals and small startup companies while he was president. They'll argue all day long he was a billionaire who gave away his presidential salary to charities, but the paper trail remains, he reconfigured four hundred and eighty-five million dollars in debt and was merely a billionaire on paper. If he spoke it, it must be true, as to his faithful, Donald doesn't lie.
That's why it's so hard for them to rationalize he has lost so much of his base. They go back to another optic that Trump led them to believe, that being the media always lied about his rally attendance. They'll never show you the crowd, they'll never pan out and show you the tens of millions of people here. Even when they did, he'd just keep saying it. It wasn't that it was true he drew thousands of people to his rally's, he was building the optics for the future, the day he knew would come when a lot of those thousands of people grew the wiser over Trump. So much so that his estimated following of supporters dropped to thirty-three million at one point, down from seventy some million who voted for him. I often times question why a man with the support they claim he has, has a measly five million followers on his social media platform. Once Trump planted the seed of thought, for many, that's all it took to believe it forever. Everyone's lying except for Trump and them.
Having been to two prior Trump rallies in my city when I was a supporter of the former, and having done a post entitled the People of Trump, I decided to trot down to a third rally when he came here a little over a week ago and give people an honest assessment if the media is lying when they claim his rallies have diminished in capacity and if he's lying that tens of thousands of people are showing up. Between his recent rally here and the one in May 2019 he did here, I have over a hundred pictures to post. Since I don't know what the capacity limit is for posting articles here, I may have to do it in two parts. But nothing beats seeing is believing, and even when giving him the benefit of the doubt and adding a few thousand more to the equation for him, he has lost tremendous support, and no, he did not draw tens of thousands here, which is what the media said they were given as a estimate of his crowd size. The fact of the matter is, when you sit in a crowd of people all day, you hear things, there were people making claims they were told by police the rally was already filled, up to two hours before they closed the doors. One woman behind me told a story of waiting on a call to go in, seems the republican party, churches and law enforcement guaranteed Trump campaign full capacity before he even booked the event. Take that for what it's worth, but it wouldn't surprise me, especially the one told two hours before the doors closed it was already a filled event. It was even mentioned in an article the day after the event where one guy said he was told by police it was a filled event only to give up his space in line and see they were still letting people in.
I will start with this year's rally, the intent was never to have gotten into it, there's no doubt I could have, the intent was to do a crowd comparison between this year's event, and the one in 2019 at the exact same venue.
This is the view walking toward the arena.
This was one and a half hours before the doors opened. The difference here between 2019 and 2024 was no one was allowed to assemble in the middle of the street. Whereas in 2019 Trump attendees were kept behind the fence in front of the arena and protestors were kept on the other side of the street. When I got there, this time there was only one protestor.
Compared to 2019 this was pretty bare bones, including the people mingling behind in the background on the sidewalk area whether a protestor or not.
The last couple pictures show the line going down Fulton and rounding the corner at Ionia. It was this spot back in 2019 I spent two hours advising hundreds of people how far back the line was so they wouldn't waste time making the trek to the back of the line only to realize they were never getting in. At that point they had already been letting people in for a couple of hours, here, at this point taking this picture they hadn't started letting people in. This is one and a half hours before the doors open.
This is looking straight down Ionia, note the tall buildings in the background but particularly the ones on the left.
Now I will post up all the pictures of the line until I can get to the end of the line. There will be four, five pictures taken of the other (left) side of the street to show there isn't much going on the other side.
At this point, about one hour before the doors open, this is the end of the line. The line will go to Franklin St, in a straight line from the arena, now known as Martin Luther King St, unlike in 2019, once it reaches the end of Franklin it will turn to the right, make a trek across the highway overpass, bend down around a curve before it ends. I will show the rest of the way to Franklin at this point in time, and it is 1.2 miles from the arena.
That is the corner of Franklin and Ionia, a straight-line down Ionia to Franklin, where later in the day the line will turn right, go over an overpass, start rounding a curb that goes downhill where it will end.
This is looking west down Franklin, where a block up it crosses Division.
This is the corner of Franklin and Division, Franklin now known as MLK street. In 2019, the line came up Wealthy Street via a lot of rounding around blocks, coming up Commerce to Wealthy, down Division to Franklin, cross this street and continue on. It was walking around block after block and finally asking people walking back how far back the line was. They said it went up Wealthy to Division and crossed over Franklin. That was the point I went back toward the arena, since they had already been letting people in for a couple of hours I didn't stand a chance getting in. But I really wanted to participate in all the energy so that's when I decided to stand on the corner and tell people, who were still coming in by the hundreds, where the end of the line was so they wouldn't waste their time waiting in line to get in when there was no way at that point of getting in.
So now I will take you down Division and show you where and why the line came up there last time.
This is Wealthy and Division looking back south towards Franklin.
This is the corner of Wealthy and Division looking west. Past this building is a road, Commerce, where the line came up from, to the corner of Wealthy and Division, crossed Wealthy and went straight down to Franklin and crossed over.
This is looking west toward Ionia off Commerce. This is what it looked like when Trump was July 13, 2024.
and the next street looking west towards Ionia
and the next street
and the next street
and the next street
and the next street
and so forth and so on. The reason the line didn't go straight up Franklin this time and wound around over onto the overpass, was because the line was diverted to the other side of the street. It was that diversion that led people to start winding around the blocks, around the blocks where I made note to pay attention to all those buildings on the other side of the street at the beginning. The reason they didn't wind around and end up going all the way to Franklin after having formed around those blocks, was because there are a couple of no outlet streets off Ionia towards the end down by Franklin, so once they made it around all those blocks with the buildings, they ended up going south down Commerce, up Wealthy, down Division, crossing over at Franklin.
Now I'll show you what that spectacular sight looked like, at least up until I gave up trying to find the end of the line.
This was what it looked like coming upon the arena area in 2019. Lots of protesters on the left side across the road from those lining up to get into the arena.
The next picture is on Fulton with the line to get into the arena going east before it turns to go down Ionia.
This is where the line is diverted to across the street, and they start snaking around the blocks.
You can see it was an endless endeavor, there was simply no way a person was getting in, this was already two hours into them letting people in, and the line was already stretched all the way to Franklin via going up Commerce, to Wealthy, up Wealthy to Franklin and crossing over. There was absolutely no comparison to the magic of 2019 in 2024. People just kept coming in the hundreds for the next two hours. I was an avid supporter at the time, and I just wanted to be part of the energy emanating in that crowd, so I stood on the corner telling me how far back the line was, and if you counted the distance around all those blocks, it would have added up to a lot more than just that 1.2-mile straight line back on July 13th. I sat there until the doors closed, and I have a sun burned face to prove it, lol. I wanted to see what the line looked once they closed the doors.
They had already started tearing one side of the inside fencing down.
This was taking a picture of back toward where I hung out most the time I was waiting for the doors to close. There were a few people down there, including one other protestor who hung around.
lol, anyway, back to the remaining line
The end of the line, about one and a half block of people on Ionia waiting to get in.
On my way out, this was the crowd on the other side the street from the arena. These are pictures on my way leaving the area.
The arena holds twelve hundred people, where are the tens of thousands who didn't get in? Compare that to what it looked like in front of the arena in 2019 when they shut the doors.
Looking off to the left of where I was standing.
Looking straight at the arena.
Looking to the right of where I was standing.
In 2019 you were surrounded by a sea of people. His estimated crowd was twenty-five to thirty thousand people. The streets were packed, the restaurants were packed, the bars were packed, but this time maybe he had roughly a thousand people between what was left in the line and hanging about. I'd consider that generous, if he lost two thousand people who didn't want to walk to the end of line, with the arena occupancy of 12,000, if they filled every seat, the people outside, and the people who didn't want to wait in line, that's roughly 15,000 people, even if one want to give him the benefit of the doubt and add a couple thousand more to those who didn't want to walk to the end of the line, that brings it up to 17,000, which I still consider generous from what I experienced at his past rally's here. That would still be an estimated loss of eight to thirteen thousand people. When you consider thousands may have been pre-ordained to attend for the optics of reaching a full house, the losses could be tremendous if they hadn't been convinced to show up.
Now you understand the repetitive nature of Trump, your keep repeating something long enough, people start to believe it.
