A Comment on Trump's Shooting Rally

 Here is something important that I think has been lost in all of the talk about the (very likely staged) supposed shooting at Donald Trump at his Pennsylvania rally the other day.

Before Making my remarks, I want to dwell briefly on why I believe I am qualified to say what I have to claim here.  I have two qualifications:  First and least of all, I have been counting crowds at demonstrations and rallies since the Vietnam protest days, when I learned that you could not trust mainstream media accounts of the number of attendees.  Second, and more important, is my 38 year career in film and TV production.  Why this is important, I will make clear below.

Anyway, here, courtesy of the BBC, is an aerial photo of the rally site:

And here is a rough plan (not to scale) of what you see above:

Over the course of my film career, I have had to create the appearance of large crowds in the background of the principal action, say at a baseball game or other large event.  Of course, it's always a fight with the UPM about how many extras we can get to fill in the space behind the actors, so generally we have to position them carefully to fill the shot and create the impression of a full stadium.  So, based on that experience, here is what I see here.  Behind and to either side of the stage are relatively small grandstands.  I believe the two side ones could hold about 220 people each, with the rear one holding about 420, for a total of 860 people.  These three grandstands are placed so that any head on shot of the stage, or any shot from the side, will show a mass of people, creating the illusion of a huge crowd.  That's what we do in TV, only we are creating fiction, not passing it off as reality.  Now, as for the rest, I have shown with dotted lines the extent of the rest of the "crowd" area at this event.  My experience (and I have heard a couple of others say the same) is that there is room for around 1800 people there.  If you want to try to figure it out yourself, look at the size of the vehicle to the right of the picture.  All told, that adds up to this: The expected attendance at this event was no more that around 2600 people.

Remember the old days, in 2020 or 2016, when Trump used to have tens of thousands (or so he claimed) show up at his rallies?  The truth is that the enthusiasm for Trump is largely dead, and is only maintained because the billionaires financing his run can afford to mount these synthetic spectacles, which have no purpose other than to massively delude the public into believing that there is a tidal wave of support behind Trump.  

The danger of a return of Trump is still massive, but it is not because the American people really support him that much any more.  As I said in a previous post, Trump is like an old joke, told a few times too often.  The American public is just tired of the clown show.  Trump may mount some last gasp this week at his pathetic convention, but I am sticking my neck out right now, and predicting that, despite all the cheating and lying and election manipulating, despite all of their crooked judges and Senators, they just don't have a saleable product at this point.  Of course, the popular vote means nothing to the Republicans now, but I think most Americans see him as a massive annoyance more than as an entertainment, so insofar as real elections go, the guy is sunk.  By November, people are going to be so sick of him that they will virtually pay to have him out of their lives.