Trump’s Vanishing Act: Why Trump Rallies Are Going Extinct

Welcome to Trail Mix, a fun but nutritious snack for your election news diet. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com.

This week, we examine the slow death of the old school Trump rally. Plus, Ron’s mystery man on the trail, and one of the biggest hits on the local GOP fundraising circuit this year: the AR-15.

Vanishing Act

DERRY, New Hampshire—Gone are the MAGA days of multiple rallies for Donald Trump, where the former president would crisscross the country as far as his plane could take him—so long as he could make it into his own bed at one of his properties by the end of the night.

In 2016, Trump held 323 rallies between the primary and general elections. In 2020, he managed to squeeze in almost 70 rallies between the Nov. 3 election and the COVID-era restart on June 20, sometimes going as high as three or four rallies in a single day.

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This time around, Trump’s rally schedule has been significantly diminished, settling at around two per month in the run up to Iowa.

It’s a reduction due to a confluence of factors, ranging from his legal peril and crowded court schedule to the cost savings and messaging upside of keeping the MAGA festivals to a minimum. His events are increasingly billed as speeches instead of rallies, with the next one scheduled for Nov. 8 at Ted Hendricks Stadium in Hialeah, Florida on the night of the third GOP debate, marking only his seventh major venue rally this year.

“Honestly, given he has legal risk on many fronts, I’d probably do the same just to minimize anything that would fuck up his legal defense,” a former senior Trump adviser told The Daily Beast. “Let everyone else flame out. Then hit the gas.”

Although Trump’s once cash-flush and now cash-strapped “Save America” leadership PAC can cover legal expenses for himself and his allies, that flexibility comes with a major drawback. While candidates can use leadership PACs to pay for pretty much anything, the tradeoff is they can’t use them to pay for their own campaign activity. Once Trump became a candidate again—officially announcing in November 2022, though some legal experts contend he’d already been in the race for a long time—Save America, which had raised more than $140 million, couldn’t pay the bills for his events. Those expenses fell to his new campaign committee, which didn’t have the kind of cash he’d stashed in Save America. He had to start fresh, more or less.

While the rallies have been crucial to Trump’s relationship with the base, they are not cheap. The rallies can run anywhere from the low- to mid-six-figure range—all the way up to $2 million. (The most notable pricy example was his botched Tulsa rally during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, which set his campaign back $2.2 million.)

A lot goes into a Trump rally. Costs include advance setup, travel for Trump and his staff, venue rental, outside contractors, staging and audio/visual components, and additional security on top of the Secret Service and TSA agents running the metal detectors. So if the leaner Trump 2024 operation is looking to save some serious scratch, ratcheting down the rally schedule could go a long way.

(Trump also has a well-documented penchant for stiffing local first responders over tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid overtime and other rally-adjacent expenses, as The Daily Beast previously reported.)

The Trump campaign said the plan is working so far, but would not say when the multi-rally days would return or when the schedule would ramp up from roughly two per month.

“We literally have a rally in Miami in a week and a half,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told The Daily Beast. “Also, we’re dominating the entire field in polling and fundraising. What we’ve done has worked and that’s called ‘being smart.’”

Of course, on the legal front, Trump can land himself in hot water with a judge free of charge—comparatively, at least.

Earlier this week, the former president received a $10,000 fine for violating the gag order set by New York Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who also threatened Trump with jail time and ominously warned, “This court is way beyond the warning stage.”

Beyond what’s now under gag order, however, Trump still enjoys broad leeway at his campaign events with politically protected speech under the First Amendment. But just because there are plenty of things for him to talk about other than menacing judges, witnesses, and jurors, doesn’t mean they still pack the same punch. And in recent weeks, it seems clear that, between the looming legal peril and his borderline boredom with a healthy 40 to 50 point lead over the rest of the field, something has gone lacking.

“President Trump has all the momentum in the GOP primary,” a GOP aide close to Trump told The Daily Beast. “He is dominating in fundraising, polling, and energy on the ground. The rallies serve as an opportunity to fire up his base, but aren’t necessary as he turns toward the general election.”

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The decline of the traditional Trump rally also reveals itself in the former president’s tangents and efforts to connect with the crowd.

At one point during his speech in Derry, New Hampshire, on Monday, Trump went off-script to describe his travels around the country, complaining about seeing “containers of McDonald’s where the container is six months old, cars have been riding on it, water has been raining on it.”

“It’s disgusting, what happened,” Trump said. “It will be a part of my election—you know, it’s been a part of my election platform.”

When the McDonald’s container plank of his campaign platform didn’t quite land with the crowd, Trump tried reverting to one of his greatest hits.

“Does anybody want to hear ‘The Snake?’” Trump said to moderate applause—referring to the Al Wilson soul tune, which Trump delivers in his own version of beat poetry—after some attendees began to make their way for the exits. (Beating traffic is almost as revered a pastime at Trump rallies compared to sporting a MAGA hat.)

“Who hasn’t heard ‘The Snake’?” Trump asked the crowd.

One person clapped. The rest of the room, apparently, had heard the bit before.

“OK, good, like 45 percent of the room,” Trump declared before going ahead and reading the poem anyway.

The Year of the GOP Gun Raffle

State and local Republicans keep hosting auctions for AR-15s and other high powered weapons, with North Carolina holding at least half a dozen so far this year, according to publicly available raffles reviewed by The Daily Beast.

North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson might be one of the biggest proponents of the uniquely American approach to political organizing, most recently in an effort to counterprogram an anti-gun violence protest in the wake of a fatal shooting at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

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The North Carolina GOP also had a “30 for 30 Gun Raffle Picnic” in July.

Similar events popped up around the 2022 midterms, with notable auctions causing controversy in New Hampshire, Missouri, Rhode Island, Virginia, Illinois, and other states.

In Maine, where a gunman shot and killed 18 people on Wednesday night, there is also a rich tradition of gun fundraisers, including for AR-15s, the same weapon used by the shooter at a Lewiston bowling alley and local restaurant.

The auctions seem to be a virtue signaling exercise to indicate that such and such candidate strongly supports few restrictions on gun ownership. But the fundraiser also risks ostracizing the candidate with certain constituencies—which may be the point.

Off The Beaten Path

Ron’s mystery man. The Florida governor raised some eyebrows among New Hampshire political observers when a well-dressed gentleman stood out like a sore thumb among the sweater-vest clad Never Back Down staffers. The man was also seen following the candidate around during his last visit to the state when he signed up for the primary ballot.

That man is former top DeSantis aide Larry Keefe, who quietly quit his post as Florida’s public safety czar—which included flying to Texas to oversee Florida’s transportation of migrants to northern states—to join the campaign on a volunteer basis. Keefe was initially identified on a trip to New Hampshire by New York Times reporter Nicholas Nehamas.

“He’s taking notes, seeing what’s what,” a source close to the DeSantis campaign in New Hampshire told The Daily Beast.

Running count

Days until the first votes cast in Iowa: 80

Days since the last DeSantis campaign reboot: 66

Trump indictments: 4

Vermin Supreme sightings: 3

Days since DeSantis strategist Jeff Roe’s self-imposed deadline to catch Trump: 1

Campaign lit

Mad Dems. Democrats may have already found their golden ad for 2024 to springboard off of the speaker debacle, our new congressional reporter Riley Rogerson scoops.

The definition of Ronsanity. DeSantis is doing fine on the stump, but he keeps doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, Stephanie Murray reports for The Messenger.

Double dipping. Pennsylvania repeat Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick is pushing the limits of “testing the waters,” Roger Sollenberger reports in this week’s Pay Dirt newsletter.

Between a Mike and a hard place. Democrats might be appalled by new Speaker Mike Johnson’s hardline conservative stances and history of election denialism, but they’ve resigned themselves to having to work with him anyway, Sam Brodey and Riley Rogerson report.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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