Byron York describes “The big Trump rallies you don’t see.”
“I can’t believe there aren’t any newspeople here,” said Linda of Greene County, Pennsylvania, as she stood among hundreds of cars and pickup trucks idling in long parallel lines in a vast big-box-store parking lot Saturday, waiting to join the Interstate 70 Trump Train. Indeed, although there were carloads of Trump supporters as far as one could see, and many more on the way from Ohio and West Virginia, and this enormous political event was happening less than two weeks before the presidential election, as far as I could tell, I was the only newsperson there.
It was the biggest political rally no one saw.
We see, for the most part, what the people who run news organizations want us to see.
And gatherings like it have been happening for months in some of the places President Trump needs most to win if he is to be reelected. And, remarkably, the rallies are not the work of the Trump campaign. The road rally in Washington, Pennsylvania, was organized and staged by local Trump supporters, linked together largely by Facebook…
The same thing has been happening all around the country. Voters understand what is at stake:
“We’re here because we believe he is the only way we’re going to have an economy in the future,” said Sherri from Claysville.
The road rally that Byron covered included thousands of vehicles from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, so energy loomed large as an issue:
“We’re a big oil and gas family,” said Kristie from Washington. “We’re living the American dream because of the oil and gas industry.”
***
When I asked if people were connected to the energy industry, my favorite answer came from Dan from Greene County, who said, “Yes, I am connected to the energy industry, because I’ve got electricity and gas in my house.” Point made. We all have a connection to the energy industry.
Some, of course, understand this better than others.
They feel so strongly about Trump because they know he has supported their industry while Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden, wanted to cripple and ultimately eliminate it. They know Trump has not miraculously saved the energy industry in Pennsylvania. They didn’t expect that he would. Their calculus was much more basic: In 2016, they voted for the candidate who would stop trying to kill the industry that supports 322,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, according to an energy industry estimate.
Now, they know a President Joe Biden would resume the green crusade to destroy the oil and gas business. On Saturday, they were all very aware that just a few days before, in the last presidential debate, Biden had vowed to “transition” the United States away from oil and gas.
Much more at the link. An obvious question is, where are the thousands of people spontaneously turning out to support Joe Biden? To take just one example, where were the Biden boat parades? There weren’t any, of course. On the contrary: when Biden and Kamala Harris made a joint appearance in Yuma, Arizona, not a single person showed up. No one except a few puzzled reporters.
Contrast that with the throngs that greeted President Trump when he flew into Prescott, Arizona a few days ago. Thousands of people, most of whom probably had no hope of hearing him speak, turned out to show their support:
Just arriving in Prescott, what a crowd! I love Arizona!! pic.twitter.com/qssvOznppz
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020
It is worth remembering that political polls as news stories are a very recent phenomenon. If you had not seen any news stories about polling, how much chance would you give Joe Biden of winning the election? And to what extent is the fact that Biden has a chance the result of news stories about polls showing him in the lead?
We haven’t made any official predictions yet; if we can get a VIP Live event set up for next week, we likely will make them then. But for now, I will say that I am leaning toward going with my lying eyes.
