President Trump Needs to Fire People

What happened in Tulsa was inexcusable

It does not matter that allegedly a million tickets to the Trump rally in Tulsa were taken by progressives. It does not matter for one big reason — there was no cap. So if a million progressives bought up tickets, there were still an infinite number of tickets available for others.

But there is one element of this that matters greatly.

The President’s campaign team has been bragging about their data collection and data analytics. If a million progressives took all those tickets, the Trump campaign should have known if their data collection efforts were at the level they claim. That they did not know is a sign something is fundamentally wrong within the campaign.

The fact that the Trump campaign bragged about the number and it not only did not materialize, but the President was left embarrassed, speaks to incompetence at the Trump campaign. Just play out the scenarios.

SCENARIO 1: People didn’t come because they heard about the crowd size.

Well, they heard about the crowd size because of the President’s team bragging about the crowd size. This is the campaign team that should have been able to extrapolate what was happening from their data.

SCENARIO 2: People didn’t come because of reasonable concerns about the virus.

Again, the President’s team was bragging about the crowd size. If people were not coming out because of the virus, the President’s team on the ground should have realized it and downplayed expectations.

SCENARIO 3: Progressives really did register for 1 million tickets.

As I noted, it does not matter because there was no cap. With an infinite number of tickets, anyone could get one. The tickets were about data collection, not capacity. But the Trump team claims to be masters of data analytics. Consequently, they should have easily been able to tell that the people getting the tickets online were progressives. It is really easy to analyze that online and even I, a non-expert, know how to do that.

SCENARIO 4: The Trump team knew it wasn’t going to have a huge crowd.

This is the most troubling one and the most likely one. But they lied to the President and the press and that all generated enormously negative headlines for the President. The team failed the boss.

In fact, every scenario comes back to that — the President’s own campaign team insisted on bragging about the projected crowd size and they ultimately attracted less than 6,200 attendees into an area that holds three times as many.

Brad Parscale, who has gotten very wealthy off the President’s campaign, went onto social media on Saturday evening to do some damage control. He claimed protestors were blocking entrances and making it difficult for people to get in the arena. This reads like Potemkin creating the facade of a village to fool people.

Brad Parscale @parscale

Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally. They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering. Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!

m.washingtontimes.comAnti-Trump protesters ‘interfere’ with rally, campaign claims, as outdoor speeches canceledThe Trump campaign canceled planned outdoor speeches by President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at their comeback rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday night after protesters “interfered” with Trump supporters, campaign officials said.

Yes, there were protestors, but they were not enough to obstruct people getting into the facility and they were not enough to prevent the projected spillover crowds that never materialized.

The Tulsa rally was supposed to be a reboot for the President’s campaign. The campaign relentlessly hyped the projected crowd size, which did not materialize and it leaves the President embarrassed by news media headlines laughing about his failure to attract the crowd.

Or it could just be that not that many people wanted to go see him, which raises all sorts of other questions. Regardless, however, there’s a level of incompetence at the campaign level to build up the anticipation of a huge crowd and have it not show up. Someone or some group within the campaign should be fired.

Don’t get upset when the press uses the metric you gave them and then shows you didn’t live up to that metric. This is what happened and it was an amateur mistake.