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Early last year, as his legal troubles started to intensify, Donald Trump said that if he were to face charges, “I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had.”
Nine months later, the former president delivered a more ominous message, saying that if he were indicted, the United States would face “problems ... the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen.”
The rhetoric turned into directives in the spring. In March, as the former president prepared for an indictment in New York, he turned to his social media platform, writing, “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” In case that was too subtle, Trump added a few hours later, “IT’S TIME!!! ... WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. ... WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
Though it seemed as if Trump envisioned mass groups of red-capped followers taking to the streets, those calls were largely ignored. Some supporters turned out in Manhattan around the time of his first arrest, but the gatherings were, by any fair measure, underwhelming duds.
Yesterday, as The New York Times reported, it happened again. After noting the high-profile Trump supporters who “called on supporters to rally to his side” — the former president himself wrote, “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” late last week — the article added:
All of this raised the level of concern among civic leaders in the city, who issued calls for protesters to remain peaceful. In the end, their fears did not materialize. It did not appear that any Proud Boys showed up and about 500 people, including one with a pig’s head on a spear, answered Mr. Trump’s call to action.
Local law enforcement was prepared for crowds of up to 50,000 people.
The Times went on to note that Trump’s summons received “a kind of fizzled response.” The fact that this has now happened twice — the first time in his original hometown of New York City, the second time in his adopted Florida home — is no doubt disappointing to the former president, especially after his “IT’S TIME!!! ... PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!” message.
As for why, exactly, these calls haven’t worked, there are plenty of competing explanations, which my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem summarized in a terrific piece.
“It may have to do with post-Jan. 6 wariness of getting in trouble if a pro-Trump protest spirals out of control,” Aleem wrote. “Perhaps conspiracy theories about the government laying traps for peaceful protesters scared them out of showing up. Maybe Trump finally has exhausted his base with his constant hysteria. ... Whatever the reasons may be, Trump is looking weak.”