Did I learn anything at the Trump rally?

     "There's no way Joe Biden got 81 million votes. It's impossible. They know they're cheating." 

[Audience cheers.]

       Dave Duquette, founder of Western Justice, one of several speakers who preceded Mike Lindell, the "Pillow Man."

The crowd disabused me of some misconceptions.

I thought a Trump rally might focus on Trump's policy positions. No.  I heard very little about Trump's positions on immigration; on his tilt toward Russia; his criticism of NATO, his support for Netanyahu; his support for more fossil fuel production. Over the course of nine hours I don't think I ever heard the word Russia or Ukraine. The rally was for Trump the person. He is the hero. He is the victim. 

I thought a Trump rally might be an expression of party loyalty. No. It is Trump loyalty. Except for two litmus test issues, guns and abortion, Trump shaped the current GOP. It was a crowd of long term Republicans, but they shed their former policy positions. Former leaders of the party are now enemies since they did not become Trump loyalists. George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Richard Cheney, Liz Cheney, and Bill Barr are all enemies now, even at a rally organized by Republicans. If you are not MAGA, you are a RINO. RINOs are turncoats.

I thought maybe they knew Trump's “stolen election” claim was a con, and a Trump audience liked watching him get away with with a flagrant lie. No. They believe the Big Lie. There is a school of thought that the stolen election claim is a way for Trump to show dominance. There is little credit in agreeing that the sky is blue and grass is green. You show dominance is telling an obvious and outrageous lie, and then sticking to the story and creating a new reality with your facts. He sticks to his story, exasperating Democrats. He shows he can tell the Big Lie right in front of everyone. It is shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, but bigger. In this understanding, Trump voters are cheerleaders and willing participants in the con.They are joining Trump in giving a big "you can't make me" to the powers that be from the media, the courts, the established order they perceive to have been created by liberals.  Trump never surrenders. Nor do they. 

The speakers and audience repeatedly affirmed they think the election was stolen from Trump, by Democrats, George Soros, the mainstream media, strings pulled by Barack Obama, and RINOs. Biden's presumed incompetence is key to the disbelief that he won legitimately. Biden campaigned from his basement to tiny crowds sitting in spaced circles. Trump spoke to tens of thousands at a time. Biden is pathetic. He could not have won.

Mike Lindell put numbers on this. He said that if Democrats had merely rigged a few states, then those states would show outlier numbers which would expose the vote switching. Democrats are evil, he said, and they are clever about it. They rigged all the states, he said. Forget the audits. Forget the recounts. Forget the pre-election polls. Tabulating machines switched votes on a massive scale. In authentic counting, nationwide Trump wins about 67% of the vote and Biden about 33%. That is the reality of the American electorate, he said. 

The audience cheered. This made sense to them. The fixed star of truth is that it was impossible for Biden to win. Impossible things don't happen. Therefore, there must be other explanations.

Multiple polls preceding the 2020 election showed that the election was close and Biden had a small lead. That is how the presidential election turned out. The two Georgia senate elections in December of 2020 brought a result entirely consistent with the presidential vote, a narrow win by Democrats. If Democrats had the power to change 20 million votes why didn't they also change a couple of representative and senate votes so they had majorities in both houses?

None of this matters. Those are my facts, not theirs. Biden could not possibly have won. That is their fact.

It was a well-attended meeting. I estimate 500 people in attendance. It was a large venue, and it was set up to accommodate four times that number. Democrats would take the wrong message by looking at the empty chairs. They should notice the occupied ones. There are a lot of believers.

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