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June 15, 2020

Trump's planned Tulsa rally has leftists in a panic

By Andrea Widburg

Trump is careful to pick his battles.  Sticking to the June 19 date for his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma was an unnecessary battle, so the rally is currently set for June 20, a date that even leftists can't challenge.  Despite the date switch, it looks as if over 800,000 people have signed up to attend.  Faced with that datum, the media have stepped up their efforts to try to reinstate Wuhan Virus fear.

When the Trump campaign announced that Trump's first post-lockdown rally would be in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19, leftists, both within and outside the media, tried to shut down the rally by contending that the date chosen was racist because it coincided with "Juneteenth," a remembrance of the emancipation announcement in Texas in 1865.  As a backup, they argued that the location was racist because, in 1921, local Democrats engaged in a horrific racist attack against Tulsa's black community.

Trump, who knows when to fight and when to walk away, didn't take the bait on this one.  Instead, he simply announced that "out of respect" for Juneteenth, he was rescheduling the rally for June 20, an unexceptional date.

The media instantly switched over to complaining that the rally is going to create a new Wuhan Virus outbreak.  The tone of the coverage, complete with "experts," is "we're all gonna die!"

Interestingly, the Health Department's message was much milder when it came to the Black Lives Matter protests:

The Tulsa Health Department said while it 100% supports everyone's right to gather for a peaceful protest, it does still encourage Tulsans to wear a mask, and try to keep their distance, even in crowded situations. 

The media were apoplectic, with the AP leading the pack:

Trump will head to Tulsa, Oklahoma — a state that has seen relatively few COVID-19 cases. Yet the Tulsa City-County Health Department's director told the Tulsa World over the weekend that he wished the Trump campaign would move the date back because of a "significant increase in our case trends."

"I'm concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I'm also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well," Dr. Bruce Dart told the newspaper.

Other health experts also cite the danger of infection spreading among the crowd and sparking outbreaks when people return to their homes. The Trump campaign itself acknowledges the risk in a waiver attendees must agree to absolving them of any responsibility should people get sick.

Ordinary Trump-haters were equally outraged:

At least one ran with a hypothetical of Trump catching the Wuhan Virus and dying:

This all sounds very serious and important, right until you remember that the Wuhan Virus vanished entirely as a concern during the entire Black Lives Matter protests.  Suddenly, civil rights (and electing a president is still a civil right) trumped virus concerns.

Given that it's true that even a stopped watch is right twice a day, perhaps the rally will boost the virus's spread a little.  Only silly people, however, now take the media and the "experts" seriously when they talk about a virus — especially considering that just about everything they predicted or feared was wrong.

So are all these people squawking again about the virus just yanking Trump's chain?  No, they're really afraid, but it's not the virus that scares them.  Instead, they're afraid of the enthusiasm for Trump:

This enthusiasm, by the way, is for a venue that seats 20,000.  And that data haul — whew!

Leftists are pointing out that Tulsa's population is only 392,000, implying that the 800,000 number is a fake.  They're missing that the greater Tulsa area is home to 1,231,000 people.  There are also many smaller communities out there that have people who would probably like to attend — and Oklahoma City, with a larger metro population of 1,396,000, is less than two hours away.

It turns out that for Democrats, there are scarier things than a virus — and two of those things are a vast Trump campaign database and a wildly energetic voter base.

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