Ever since Kamala Harris got in a jab about Donald Trump’s rallies during the debate on September 10th, it’s been eating him alive. And I don’t mean it’s been gnawing away at the back of his brain.

I mean, this is literally all he can think about. After she mockingly invited people to go to one of his rallies so they could watch the crowd exit early out of “exhaustion and boredom,” Trump seemed to lose his mind.

Since then, he’s gone out of his way to insist that it’s not happening. He says it during his rallies now, even as people are filing up the stairs and out of the venue.

I can understand why he was so upset at Kamala’s remarks. “During his rallies, you’ll hear him talk about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter… And what you’ll notice is that people start leaving early out of exhaustion and boredom,” she told the debate moderators and the people at home watching.

Trump did a town hall on Tuesday in Flint, just 120 miles from his latest rally. Michigan has been very important to him as a swing state. During the town hall, he once again reiterated that his fans never left early.

“We do these rallies — they’re massive rallies. Everybody loves — everybody stays until the end, by the way,” he said, just hours before videos of people leaving the town hall started circulating the internet.

Obviously those die-hards didn’t get the memo, when he said at the same town hall “If I saw them leaving, I’d say: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, make America great again, now get the hell out.’ Because I don’t want people leaving.”

So by the time Trump got to Walker yesterday, he was understandably tired of repeating the same thing. He usually rides a horse until it drops dead, but there’s only so many times you can withstand the humiliation of saying something and being proven immediately wrong by your own followers.

So what to do?

Well, Trump took the interesting tack of instead trying to explain why people are leaving his rallies. He can’t possibly keep denying that it’s happening when there’s so much evidence. So he might as well make up a good excuse.

Trump settled on logistics.

He started haltingly, still reliant on his crutch of denial: “The people that you see leaving — because nobody ever leaves, and when they do, I finish up quick, believe me,” he said.

I know, I haven’t gone on to the next part yet, but let’s just savor that for half a sec. “The people that you see leaving — because nobody ever leaves” is just a hilarious string of words.

“Sometimes if I’m late, the plane gets delayed. Lots of things happen. There’s a little hurricane in Florida, as you know.” Yes, the people in Michigan have heard about the hurricane in Florida. We all have.

They also know you haven’t had a rally in Florida since July.

Trump went on to say that sometimes his attendees leave after they’ve stayed to get pictures with him. I’m not sure why he threw that in there, because that indicates people staying longer than the rally, not leaving early. Or maybe he was trying to liken it to people skipping the encore at a concert so they can get out of parking before the mad dash of the whole crowd.

Regardless, even if every single person who got up out of their seats before he was done speaking went directly outside the hall to wait in line to get a picture with him, the line would be like 15 minutes long, max. He’s down to TINY rallies these days, folks. The one yesterday was at a manufacturing plant in the suburbs, and there were a little over a thousand people there.

The line to get a picture with the Oak Ridge Boys at a state fair would be longer than that.

The reason crowd size and the idea of people leaving has been such a sticking point for the flaxen-haired former president isn’t just about ego. He really needs people to think that he has as much support today as ever, if not more.

Unfortunately for Trump, this is as close a race as he can hope for, and the polls are starting to skew pretty favorably toward his opponent. In fact, the latest Morning Consult polls have Harris leading in Michigan, and the Democratic candidate for Senate, Elissa Slotkin, winning as well by a pretty good margin.

It looks like Michigan is going to go blue this year, and that’s going to make Trump’s face turn red.

Trump: The people that you see leaving right now… It looks like they’re leaving but they’re not leaving pic.twitter.com/QzbItC1Ydx

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 27, 2024