In an unsurprising but nonetheless remarkable example of media manipulation, and what a true “enthusiasm gap” looks like, while former President Barack Obama failed to fill the seats in a rather small venue in Nevada on Monday, thousands of supporters of President Trump were once again willing to come to one of his packed-out events and hang around in the overflow areas just to be part of the “rock star” appearance.
The contrast is pointed out by Red State’s Brandon Morse, who provides tweeted videos and photos showing the rather stunning difference between Obama’s media-hyped event and Trump’s standard media-maligned but jam-packed rallies.
The Obama event, held in an attempt to save struggling Democratic senatorial candidate Jacky Rosen, Morse notes, has been covered as if it was a “must-see/must-attend” blowout. “By the media’s account, Obama was surrounded by energized Democrats and enthusiastic voters. The bleachers behind him were packed to the brim, and the people in front were numerous,” writes Morse. “Or were they?”
You can probably guess the answer, as demonstrated by some folks on Twitter who aren’t so willing to protect Obama’s image as an agenda-driven media:
Instead of showing all the empty bleachers, camera stayed tight on the staged bleacher sections, and particularly favored an angle similar to this one showing Obama from the front with a full section of bleachers behind him.
Meanwhile, Trump’s rally with Sen. Ted Cruz was in Houston, Texas on the same day.
“Supporters of the president began lining up outside of Houston’s 18,000-seat Toyota Center more than 24 hours before the president was set to speak,” the Daily Wire’s Joseph Curl reports. “The event was moved from a 8,000-seat venue after demand outpaced supply, and even once inside the Houston Rockets home court arena, requests for tickets topped 100,000 people.”
Below are some of the shots of the massive number of people who converged on the Toyota Center Monday to express their support for Trump and Cruz. Trump ended up tweeting a lot of them, in part because most mainstream media outlets have mysteriously failed to highlight them — and, of course, he’s someone who believes, for good reason, that crowd size matters:
Not only did tens of thousands try to get into the packed-out event, some even camped out overnight to get a seat at the rally:
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this week found Trump hitting his highest approval rating ever and the once sizable voter enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans to have largely collapsed.
Related: NBC/WSJ Poll: Trump Highest Approval Yet, Republicans Best Score On Economy Ever