Politics - News Analysis

Trump Gets Blasted on All Sides For Moving Inauguration Indoors, Echoing His Insecurity About Small 2017 Crowd

The cold? Come on, pal. You've spoken in worse weather than this.

Donald Trump is right in the middle of a storm, both literally and figuratively. Well, semi-record cold weather in the literal case. But the real storm is the backlash he’s facing for moving the inauguration indoors to the Capitol Rotunda.

Trump announced that he will be moving the ceremony indoors after weather reports predicted weather colder than it’s been since the last time the event was held indoors, at Reagan’s second inaugural in 1985.

Many saw parallels to his Omaha rally in 2020, when six people were taken to hospitals when Trump’s team left them in the freezing cold on an airstrip after the rally, dismissing the shuttle buses for the night.

Democratic strategist David Axelrod had a different take on the affair:

That last line — “Or did he just fear small crowds?” — stuck out to me. After all, no one can forget his 2017 inauguration, which set the tone for his entire political presence in America: He insists that everyone believe that he has the biggest, loudest, most supportive crowds in the history of crowds.

He famously forced his first press secretary, Sean Spicer, to immediately come out and tell the biggest lie ever to be told in a White House press room, that “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, PERIOD.” He even had to stand there and make excuses about the angles of the photos taken (all of them, I guess) and about the ground covering that highlighted the empty areas.

“No fair looking at the places where no one’s standing!” I guess.

But it’s not just David Axelrod making fun of Trump for backing out of the outdoor inauguration. It’s a heck of a lot of social media, and even some cable news. But even that isn’t really Trump’s biggest concern. What he’s going to have to contend with now are the SUPER mad super-MAGA fans who spent thousands of dollars to come to the inauguration.

They will not be watching it live, period.

Everyone who bought a plane ticket and booked a hotel to come to what they see as the second coming of their savior is going to have to stand outside and imagine what’s happening, or watch it from their hotel. Maybe they’ll find a politics bar that’s playing Fox News instead of sports.

Just check out this man’s epic saga in four posts. He even accidentally admits he was an insurrectionist on January 6, 2021! But for a guy for voted for the cheap eggs candidate, he sure did spend a lot of money getting to the inauguration he’s not going to get to see.

Uh-oh. I think he’s starting to figure out he got screwed by Trump (again).

Now he’s getting mad at his fellow MAGA patriots who didn’t blow their hard-earned cash to go see a sexual abuser get crowned, and he’s turning on the sarcasm.

I really wish that these guys didn’t think that mentioning their participation in a terrorist act against the United States was some kind of casual flex about how gangster they are.

Here’s where UltraMAGA loses me entirely. Isn’t this the party of government non-interference? Who is the “they” that he thinks should be forcing hotels to give him back money that he gambled on weather? Trump?

No matter what, in this situation, Trump comes out looking like an idiot. Either he’s scared that people aren’t going to show up — there’s not enough rally curtains in the world to make the National Mall look smaller than it is — and it will be bad optics to start his “mandate” presidency, or he just doesn’t care in the slightest about his MAGA flock.

I’m actually betting both of those things are true.

Trump’s Truth Social post framed it as a necessity:

Trump even included a weather data image, from Friday, not what was expected Monday:

Screenshot

Of course, he didn’t show that kind of concern for his rallygoers that he left out in various fields, on tarmacs, and in warehouses around the country, but then they didn’t pay premium pricing for an event they didn’t get to attend.

I guess he just ensured the TV audience will be at least a little larger than it might have been originally.

meet the author

Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. A girlfriend, a dog, two cats, and two birds round out the equation, and in his spare time, Drewbear likes to imagine what it must be like to have spare time.

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