A year after Donald Trump left the White House, the former president realized that his legal troubles were just getting started. As talk of possible indictments grew louder, Trump held a rally in January 2022 and 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.”
We were reminded yesterday that those hopes have since been dashed. The Washington Post reported:
As Donald Trump left Thursday for his arraignment on a third criminal indictment, he fired off a social media post telling his supporters that he was showing up to a D.C. federal courthouse “for you.” Few returned the favor. … For all the online outrage, only a handful of Trump supporters turned out to protest the latest charges against the former president, continuing a shift in the right-wing fervor that once drew thousands to D.C. rallies.
The muted reactions, at least so far, are clearly not what the former president had in mind.
Revisiting our earlier coverage, it was in September 2022 when Trump delivered an ominous message, saying that if he were indicted, the United States would face “problems … the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen.”
The vague predictions turned into directives earlier this year. 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!!!”
Around the same time, the Republican derided talk of “peaceful” demonstrations, while suggesting that if he were indicted in New York, it might cause “potential death [and] destruction” that “could be catastrophic for our Country.”
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.
After his classified documents scandal led to his second indictment, the former president again called on his followers to rally behind him — Trump wrote, “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” on his social media platform — but the numbers were again small.
Local law enforcement was prepared for crowds of up to 50,000 people. The actual crowd was closer to 500.
In the nation’s capital yesterday, the precise number of pro-Trump voices is unavailable, but by any fair measure, there were just dozens of people. For a man who cares more about crowd sizes than any human being should, this must’ve been disappointing, 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, starting with the fact that the Justice Department’s extensive prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters have not gone unnoticed among the former president’s most ardent backers.
But I’m also reminded of an analysis my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem wrote in June.
“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.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
