{"id":225211,"date":"2025-12-10T08:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T08:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/225211\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T08:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T08:20:10","slug":"trumps-return-to-the-rally-stage-delivers-strange-performance-caught-between-past-and-future-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/225211\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s return to the rally stage delivers strange performance caught between past and future \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the road again. After a year of acoustic performances delivered from the Oval Office<\/a>, president Donald Trump<\/a> got the band together and flew up to the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania, on a frigid December night to deliver a message on the American economy in a strange performance in which he seemed caught between past and future.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these people,\u201d he marvelled at the very end as the crowd in the Mount Airy Casino, Mount Pocono, chanted \u201cUSA! USA!\u201d and Trump thundered: \u201cWe will fight, fight, fight, and we will win, win, win. We will make America healthy again! We will make America safe again! We will.\u201d<\/p>\n

But fight who? And win what? The general election took place in November 2024. Even anti-Trumpites are familiar with the soundbites at this stage. Those election proclamations have come to sound stale a year into his second term. This was an unusual speech by Trump: half fiery defence of the economic performance of his administration, half diatribe about enemies old, like Joe Biden (\u201ca sleepy son of a bitch\u201d) and new, like Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar (\u201cshe comes in with her little turban \u2013 all she does is bitch\u201d).<\/p>\n

For those who tuned in as a December freeze settled across the Plains and Rust Belt, this was a different rally. The small stage was a new departure from the blue-skied mega rallies of previous years, with its midnight-blue curtains and US flags decked out to resemble a typical American Legion hall: patriotic and homely. Visually, it was an intimate and retro town hall-style sermon: even the banner message, Lower Prices. Bigger Paychecks, had a Reagan-era font. <\/p>\n

And the music! For a long time before Trump took the stage, the crowd was entertained with a series of Dad Rock classics that could be categorised as spliffy \u2013 Space Oddity, the full-length Layla, Stairway to Heaven \u2013 as though the crowd were being entertained by the president\u2019s own Spotify Wrapped. <\/p>\n

As always, they were having a good time: one guy, directly in front of the stage, was dressed in the full garb of the 1776 Revolution and gave such a fluent display of air-guitar, air-drums and even air-mouth organ that the thought occurred that maybe Trump, watching on the screen backstage, had become so mesmerised and intimidated by his dance moves that he was refusing to go out. But no: Trump appeared, he did the Lee Greenwood sway and then eased into old refrains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell this is a nice crowd. We gotta lot a people standing outside … it\u2019s freezing, they got here at like two o\u2019clock in the morning or something. I\u2019m a little worried about them. Would anyone here like to give up their place?\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a line I\u2019d first heard Trump use in Conway, South Carolina, in February of last year when he was gathering the election momentum that proved unassailable. But now, in December 2025, he has had his hands on the reins of power for over a year. At times, it sounded like he was fighting an election that has already passed and which he has long been declared winner. <\/p>\n

President Joe Biden is a private citizen enduring treatment for cancer with fortitude and grace. Nobody is talking about eggs any more. Trump made an oblique reference to the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July of last year when he commented on a chart off-screen, reminding people that he had turned his head to look at a chart on that summer\u2019s day in Butler a split second before the bullets were fired \u2013 and that had made all the difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy all-time favourite chart is the one in Butler. I don\u2019t care how good that chart looks, it\u2019s s**t compared to the one in Butler.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a disconcerting allusion to that dark episode. So much has happened since, much of it generated by Trump himself, that it seems longer than a year-and-a-half ago. Trump has a masterful capacity for conjuring up new headlines and events. But that can leave it hard for his own supporters to see the wood from the trees. <\/p>\n

For instance, the quiet southern border has been his most spectacular domestic success. But it\u2019s difficult to know which was more useful to him: a teeming, overrun border to which he could point as a true crisis caused by Democratic ineptitude. Or an empty frontier which …<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now I\u2019ve fixed it and nobody wants to talk about it,\u201d he said in an observation that spoke of internal tensions.<\/p>\n

\"AudienceAudience members cheer for president Donald Trump at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

\u201cEven my own people! They say don\u2019t put it in your speech, sir. Why? Because nobody cares about it. You\u2019ve fixed the border. You know how bad that is? Because they forget what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true. Once the mechanic fixes the car, you don\u2019t talk about engines any more. He told the crowd that in president Biden\u2019s term, real wages plummeted by $3,000 per year while they had risen by $1,300 in his first year. But reading drear stats, even flattering ones, has never been his thing.<\/p>\n

No, this was Trump sounding vexed at not getting the credit; at low approval ratings; at the desertion of staunch loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom he did not mention here; and at what he is calling the \u201ccon job\u201d perpetrated by the Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, they look at the camera and they say this election is all about \u2018affordability\u2019. I can\u2019t call it a hoax because they will misconstrue that. But that\u2019s their one word. And everyone says: \u2018oh that must mean Trump has high prices.\u2019 No. Our prices are coming down \u2013 tremendously. They caused the high prices and we are bringing them down. If there is one message … you are getting lower prices and bigger paychecks. The only thing that is really going up big … it\u2019s called the stock market and your 401(k)s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plenty of Republicans enjoy healthy dividends from the buoyant stock market. But tens of millions don\u2019t. Data consensus is that inflation has not moved throughout the year while grocery prices are marginally higher. In a Tuesday afternoon interview with Politico, Trump gave himself an \u201cA plus-plus-plus-plus-plus\u201d grading. But the cash register does not lie. Whether in the McMansions of northern Virginia or the Dollar Generals in the food desert locations of the interior, people are going to know what they are paying by looking at their receipts. <\/p>\n

In Pennsylvania, he promised that the best is yet to come. \u201cNo tax on tips. No tax on tips on social security for our great seniors. Our seniors! And all of that kicks in on January 1st. We\u2019re doing great and it hasn\u2019t kicked in.\u201d<\/p>\n

But also coming are the stark changes to healthcare premiums and Medicare and Medicaid in the new year.<\/p>\n

This was low-wattage Trump. But still, when he joked about four more years, the crowd duly chanted back. But those four-more-years pleas raised the sharpening problem of succession. For even on a rambling night, it is difficult to imagine any of the Republican figures touted as Trump\u2019s heir-apparent \u2013 JD Vance or Marco Rubio or Ron De Santis or Don Jr \u2013 generating anything like the same energy or loyalty. He knows it. His staff know it. <\/p>\n

At one stage, Trump broke away to recall the conversation with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, that persuaded him to leave the White House for the short flight up to the Poconos. \u201cWe have to start campaigning, sir. We have to win the midterms and you\u2019re the guy whose gonna take us over the midterm. Where\u2019s Susie? She\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the dilemma. Maga needs the cult and strange magnetism of Trump more than ever. But on this evidence, Donald Trump is more interested in refighting old battles and reliving old glories, while the people insist that he solve their future problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the road again. After a year of acoustic performances delivered from the Oval Office, president Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[356,18,117,19,17,12175,10233,6587,12159,128,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-225211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-jd-vance","14":"tag-joe-biden","15":"tag-marco-rubio","16":"tag-republican-party","17":"tag-tv","18":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}