The Daily Blast: Trump 250 Gala Grows More Humiliating as Fox Grapples with Low Turnout

"The absolute macht is the sound of life."

“"Dine Reich wird unbezzwing was a renier."”

"Stream, the new Staffel, House of the Dragon, ab 22nd Juni, with wow." "Freudig outer dem of Staffel 1 and 2, der Volksserie, and weitere Highlights." "It's what kind of two of them will be?"

"Bendig ötter zum Herrschnauser will have." "Brahem heiß, zum besten Preis." "Now, ab 2 Euro, eight and ninety-one months." "Gear of Wartefowdee, Streaming, war noch nie so, wow." "Bedidieren, yoga, joggen, nichts entspannt mich."

"Echt, mich entspannt meine Steuer total." "Steuher, wie finanz amt, die Steuher erklären." "Ja, ich habe ganz locker über tausend Euro zurückbekommen." "Has du geheime connections?" "No, nur die wie so steuher, App."

"Wow." "And das ist einfach." "Clar, die macht fast alles automatisch." "Plötzlich fühle ich mich so entspannt." "Holl dir dein Geld zurück, tiefen entspannt, mit wie so steuher."

"This is the daily blast from the new Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent." "This week, Donald Trump kicked off his celebration of our country's 250th anniversary on the National Mall." It didn't go well.

Trump's first event was widely described by the media as sparsely attended, and as one

accountant noted, he actually asked for more people to attend the next rally. What's amusing about this is that it came after Fox News worked really hard to pump up the event. Trump and Fox both know that for the sake of their broader MAGA project, it's absolutely imperative that this gal is succeed.

“And that's why it's heartening that it's doing so poorly.”

Matt Gurts of Media Matters has a good piece digging into the Trump Fox dynamic around the 250th anniversary celebration, so we're going to get into all of it with him now. Matt, good to have you back on. "Good to be here." So one Wednesday night, Trump's so-called "Great American State Fair" had something

like a launching event, NBC News put attendance at more than 1,000, not great. The posts of the crowd thinly covered an area that's smaller than some summer outdoor or movie screenings, really not great. Matt, can you just set the stage here? What was this particular event and why was it so important?

This was the kickoff event for what's called "The Great American State Fair," the idea is to create what's effectively a world's fair, but for each of the individual states down on the national law. Originally, this was supposed to be a big concert with a bunch of different artists who were scheduled to play, but as it became more and more clear that these 3, 250 events are

extremely partisan, the artists decided to drop out, and it eventually Trump threw up his hands instead of having this concert were going to launch the state fair with what he called "The Greatest Rally Ever," it doesn't seem to have worked out that way. Certainly not, and Donald Trump himself seems very sensitive to the low turnout that this first event showed.

Here's what he said at the event about that.

Listen. Then on July 4th, we will have the Greatest Show of All on the National Mall. Your favorite president will be speaking to please show up because if we have two empty seats, you know what's going to happen, the fake news is going to say he didn't fill out the arena. Now I'll be speaking, I'll be very proudly speaking, as we ring in our 250th year with

the largest fireworks display in world history. Matt, you know, he's not exactly wrong. We damn well will make an issue of this if turnout really is bad, just as we're doing right now, but there's actually a reason for that. We tried to turn a celebration of America's 250th birthday into a Trump rally.

This is like the epitome of personalist rule turning this into like an imperial, dictatorial display of self glorification. It's important that Americans reject this and not show up to this. Can can you talk about that?

“I mean, I think what we have here is a president who does not respect any sort of separation”

between himself at the country of war. And so he views the idea of celebrating the nation's birthday as one in the same with celebrating himself.

with what he personally described as a rally speech, a partisan speech in which he sort

“of ran down when he claims or his accomplishments and talked about himself rather than the”

nation rather than what brings us together. And that becomes more and more fraught as he becomes more and more popular. So yeah, and Fox News is really participating in the kind of personalist side of this hyping this event as a great thing for Donald Trump as opposed to a great thing for the United States of America and Fox is using this event to attack critics of the president.

Let's listen to a few examples. Here is Kaylee McEnany. I'm very excited about tonight because Trump has said this is going to be the greatest rally he has ever done.

And I've been to a lot of his rallies, but if he's saying this is the greatest rally he's

ever done, I'm here for it. Now let's listen to Fox contributor Joe Concha. There's one party that seems Jesse, that is patriotic, even jingoistic about the United States of America. And then there's another party that is as angry as Rosie O'Donnell and George Conway.

I mean, they are equally as petalant. They are downright miserable about the country, if not themselves. And now let's listen to Laura Ingraham. So the entire lead up to July 4th, I consider it one big trigger warning to the mom-donny minions out there because after all, they're happiest.

And foreign flags are flying because of them, red, white, and blue. The big extravaganza is like sunshine to a vampire. Matt, before we get into what all that means, can you kind of walk us through how Fox has

“been hyping this and what they've been saying in addition to those three there?”

There was a big push leading up to Trump's speech on Wednesday night from Fox to put as much attention on it as possible. Several hosts did their shows from around the National Mall. It was a, it's been a tough few months for people who have to carry water for Donald Trump every night.

And I think the idea here was that this would be an easy win for them that they could focus on what they love to do bashing Democrats, call them on patriotic, saying that they hate America. They spent a bunch of time using the New York primaries and the victories by more progressive candidates there as evidence of this.

And basically, I mean, they're trying to use what should be a celebration of the declaration

of independence of America's 250th birthday as a partisan wedge issue, as a cudgel against the Democratic Party, while simultaneously talking up Donald Trump and his ability to pull a huge crowd and get them together for a big rally. So the failure, I think, of the kickoff event is, I think, a pretty big problem for them in the medium term as they try to keep that message going over the next 10, 12 days.

I hate to interrupt this thrilling podcast, but we have some exciting news at the DSR network. Our sub-stack is now live. Our sub-stack is going to be the new home for free and paid content here at the DSR network.

“The best way to support us over at our new sub-stack is by becoming a member.”

Right now, there's an early bird special until the end of the month where you'll get 30% off of a new subscription with no code required to sign up for either a free or paid subscription to our sub-stack, you can go to it. DSR network.substack.com, that's DSR network.substack.com. We're super excited for our new sub-stack and fee to join us there.

We have a lot of things coming that we're thrilled to share with you in the future. We appreciate your support and thank you for listening. Now back to the show. Café in a best form. With Cuba, we'll head to the café at Knotftrook for a minute.

Then with the new Cuba-Wan capsule machine from Chibu, you'll find the space café from a special place. Full Monday, thank Innovative Press Blue Technologie and Super 17-Sorten Café for every month. Aléba Premium Café is already on the 29th of January.

And here's the Cuba capsule machine in Diner Chibu, Fiale and on Chibu.de. A perfect free-links-tack. Sonne, park, picnic, and so-and-so-ville-pull. Shop-upoteek is said, chis-all-a-g-and-halo-fulling.

As a new country, 16% of 35-year-olds will be on sale.

With the code, 9-10. You've got an e-recept, a shop-upoteek-al-prunter-laden and direct one-listen. Good-shind-beddinging-off-shop-minus-upoteek-punk-com/good-shind. It isn't just that Fox is being partisan and using it as a cudgel against Democrats. Fox is kind of all-in on this more sinister project, which is to make the

celebration of the United States of America's 250th anniversary synonymous with the celebration of Trump himself. So they're all in on the personalist kind of dictatorial, cult-like nature of what Trump

actually wants to do here.

You have watched Fox News for a long time. They are very willing participants in that project.

“Can you talk about that sort of more sinister goal that they seem to be pursuing?”

Yeah, I mean, they are the propagandists for Donald Trump there, the people who get the base rallied that get them excited, terrified, ready to march to the polls in November. And if that doesn't work, who knows really what comes next, they have access to their own network's polls, which show that he is very, very unpopular on literally every issue. But they very, very talk about that.

They very, rarely talk about the worst findings from those polls. They won't talk about, you know, when he gets booed at a dick's game, they'll pretend that that doesn't. That hadn't happened, but I think what underlies all of that is this idea that because Donald Trump is really so popular, the polls showing otherwise are all fake or discounted,

“what that means is that the only way you can get election results that don't show him winning”

is to refraud through rigging. And so by refusing to help their viewers come to grips with the reality that the public at large is not on board with what Donald Trump has done, they're really setting the stage for any effort that the president takes to subvert the results in November. And data, I think, is the most worrying aspect of this.

Absolutely. And I do think it's worth airing this once again, even though we've talked about it before,

because it just never gets old.

Every time Fox News tells the truth about Trump's own popularity by broadcasting their own polls, the networks own polls, which they pay for, right? It's supposed to be something that treats them, that turns them into a real news organization. You know, here they're gathering their own data to assess the state of the country. Every time they do that, Donald Trump tells them to fire their pollster.

So they have to be extremely sensitive to what happens when they tell Fox viewers the truth about Trump's tail spinning on popularity, basically. I think that's exactly right.

“I think what we've seen from the dominion filings, the filings in the defamation case,”

that dominion voting systems filed against Fox News, because the network was lying about how it was rigging the election, we see from the internal communications that were released in that case that people of Fox are very acutely aware of the Donald Trump has the potential to damage their brand, to scare away their viewers, and to make their pay days come to an end. And so because of that, there's a reflexive desire to, you know, present the rosiest possible

picture of the world for Donald Trump to consume because he is part of that audience. He is watching all the time, and they're all very aware that at any moment he could, you know, declare some sort of crusade against them. I want to pick up on something you said before about the effort to mobilize the base, because this seems like it really gets at the core of this in an important way.

You mentioned that Fox News is seeing this as sort of a lead up to the midterm elections. Now, the problem that they face is that Donald Trump is on popular, including with elements in the MAGA coalition, even non-college whites seem to be turning on Trump over the economy, for instance, that's as one of his most loyal groups. He's losing the groups that kind of came to him temporarily in 2024 due to inflation and

the post-COVID shock and so forth.

And they know they're heading into a midterm where as it is, the pattern is always that the

party out of power has all the energy and the party in power doesn't have the energy. And so they're looking at an absolute lacking. They're seeing events like this and the tarring of the left as on patriotic over this event. As the real sort of panacea for them heading into these disastrous potentially disastrous midterms, correct?

I think that's right. I mean, it very much reminds me of the lead up to the 2018 midterms, where Fox was spending a lot of its airtime warning their viewers that if Democrats were able to take back the house or the Senate, that effectively they were saying that the MAGA will come to your house and murder you.

It's the similar sort of attempting to create some excitement from the base to go to the polls, to stop the Democrats, even if they can't get them excited about their Republicans, they're hoping that they can use fear to mobilize that audience and get them to the polls on election day to keep their Republicans at power.

One of the most amazing things about your piece was you got into how Fox News

has now reacted. Now that the turnout was pretty bad at the first, at the first go around of this thing. Can you talk about that? They just kind of suddenly went quiet in essence. Yeah, it's been as sparse as the crowd for all of the lead up that they had

on the day of the event. The morning after was extremely quiet. They've spent very little time discussing any of this.

“Which I think tracks with their effort to shield viewers from understanding how one”

popular the president is, if you can only get a thousand people to come to this rally,

then he must be in pretty sad straights. I would think that Donald Trump took notice of this. Took notice of the fact that Fox News barely covered the aftermath of this thing, don't you think? I think so. You know, he put up a truth social post in which he claimed that 45,000 people

actually showed up and it's got on it these photos where you can really just tell that it's like a low angle that tries to make it look like a huge crowd. But the space that he's filling is actually like quite small. Like if you've been to the Washington Mall, the actual area that had people in it is tiny by comparison.

“But I mean, this I think brings us all back to the first weekend of the first Trump administration”

where Sean Spicer went out and went out to say this was the biggest inauguration crowd in the history of the world. When in fact, you know, everyone could tell that Obama was much bigger. It's the sort of thing that drives Trump crazy. He can't stand that he has such a small audience.

And I think, you know, as the clip you played shows, he's voicing that a little bit. I think we can expect some sort of push to try to get more people to show up for the big July fourth event that's planned, though I have to be honest with you. Washington D.C. on July 4th is not a pleasant place to be. And they are predicting a extreme heat wave late next week.

So we'll see how all of this goes. But it doesn't it doesn't seem likely to turn out well. It sure doesn't. I would assume he's going to get better turn out than he got here. And as you say, there will be this big push, but who knows, just to close this out.

“I think we should bear down on this point, which is Donald Trump isn't calling for people”

to show up at this thing on July 4th, solely because he wants adulation and big crowds, right? Although, of course, he does want those things and it drives him absolutely insane when he doesn't get them. And when others get larger crowds, it's just a fact of Trump's tortured psyche. We know this. I think there's something else going on too, though. What Donald Trump wants is lots and lots of Americans, a big swath of the American people,

to buy into the project here, to buy into the depiction of the United States of America's 250th anniversary, as this kind of personalist celebration of him, as this effort to turn it into an imperial, dictatorial, self glorifying extravaganza. And that's why it's important that Americans

And we can't do that. Can you talk about that? Sure. I think what's important here is

“when we talk about America's birthday, we're not dating it to when the first president”

took office. We're not dating it to the establishment of the Constitution. We're not dating it to the victory over the British. We're dating it to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And that's because we are traditionally a nation that is more than its blood and its soil. We're a creedal nation that holds these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,

that we have certain unalatable rights, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We form governments to secure those rights and that they operate with the consent of the governed. These are principles that we as Americans are all supposed to share. They're ones that we tried to live up to, often failing throughout our history, but that everyone from suffragettes to civil rights leaders, have sought to expand to a larger share of the population. What Donald Trump, what the magamovement has done over the last several years is try to

take away what makes America special to make this a country that is about the people who

have lived here for a long time, inherited Americans, quote unquote. And that is just really inathema to our entire history. And to let Donald Trump and his movement seize control of the American story and cast off everything that truly makes it a great country would be I think a huge error and one that I'm not sure we could really return from. In fact, you could even argue that in very important respects, Trump and magma, the magamovement fundamentally don't accept

“many of the principles that the declaration embodies. And so that's why this is quite”

literally a celebration of him more than these ideas, right? Yeah, I mean, you just can't imagine Donald Trump credibly speaking on the importance of the consent of the governed or of the fundamental rights of man. He just doesn't have that sort of broader context, that understanding of what America is all about. And that I think is a real shame. It's, you know, I think the fact that we are not going to be able to have a real celebration of America's 250th birthday,

one that, you know, respects how far we have traveled, how far we have to go to live up to those words, it's a real shame that this is what we're going to get instead. A, it would be authoritarian rule, or trying to make it all about itself. You can't even imagine Donald Trump credibly talking about the declarations promise of equality, either. Matt Gertz, all very beautifully said and folks, let's hope this thing is a total disaster as it looks like it's going to be. Matt,

thanks so much for coming on, great to talk to you. Thanks for having me. I also share in my Donado and I'm the founder of Yaui, a conversationgeladen, of Kunstwerke and Handgefährdichte Objekte specialised. My Weil viel auf Schoppifei, by Schoppifei, in comparison to the other platforms that I tested, with Ambe Nutzer Frontlichten, was. I have already thought about all the future. All tools that for the development of

“education are important, for example, from law to law, find the right in the dashboard.”

Start now on a cost-lost test on Schoppifei.com.