2017 Apr 30^th

Last night President Trump had a rally to celebrate his election victory 100 days after the fact. His victory dance was held in Harrisburg Pennsylvania at the Farm Show Auditorium. (As a side note here, I was born in Harrisburg and I lived there again, very briefly, at the end of WW 2 after I got out of the Army Air Force.) The auditorium holds about 10,000 people and Trump’s fans filled it up. Harrisburg is an interesting location for Trump’s victory dance. Most of these rallies have been in the deep red southland where almost everybody loves Trump all to pieces. Dauphin County, in which Harrisburg is located, was won by Hillary Clinton in the last election by 49.4 to 46.5 percent. Harrisburg is 50 percent black, 30 percent white and 20 percent other. This demographic doesn’t much sound like Trump country. Harrisburg’s population is only about 30 percent of Dauphin County’s total population so Trump probably did well with the more rural folks.

Trump picked Harrisburg rather than a smaller town because smaller towns don’t have a sufficiently large hall to hold all of the Trump fans who would want to attend. Philly and Pittsburgh are not in the running because the potential for a riot if Trump showed up there without a protective Army combat team is not worth the risk.

The fact that Harrisburg was not enthusiastic about hosting the President is shown in the faces of his crowds; they are almost entirely white and middle-aged. That’s not a cross section of Harrisburg. The overwhelmingly white crowds who lined up to get into the Farm Show Auditorium were devoted Trump fans but they were not likely residents of Harrisburg.

Here were his choices: He could go to the WHCA dinner and be expected to give a short speech, including some self-deprecating humor, followed by some professional comics making fun of him, or he could slip up to Pennsylvania and bask in the adoration of ten thousand fans. For a thin-skinned, portly, multimillionaire who has never tolerated the least derogatory comment and for whom self-deprecating wit is a meaningless term, the choice is obvious. For Trump being admired, even fawned over, is the Holy Grail and he will do anything to get it.

The opening ten minutes of his Harrisburg speech found him right back in campaign mode; he spent it castigating the press. Trumps notion of a fact is whatever construction of events he finds pleasing. The press does not accommodate him in these beliefs and so Trump detests the press. He can’t buy them and he can’t bully them although he certainly tries. Witness his press secretary excluding certain members of the press from (private) briefings.

This pre-occupation with the control of the press should worry us; it is the usual first step for any tyrant who recognizes the need to control the information citizens get. Control the information and you very effectively control what the citizens think and believe; then you can control what they will do.