Typhoid Donnie Is Now Giving People Hypothermia
Post# of 123755
The president's Microbes Over America tour hit a new and different low in Nebraska Tuesday night.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl21869715
_By Charles P. Pierce
Oct 28, 2020
us president donald trump pumps his fist as he leaves after speaking during a make america great again rally at eppley airfield october 27, 2020, in omaha, nebraska Hypothermia is a helluva closing argument. From the Omaha World-Herald:
Several people who were waiting required medical attention, based on reporting at the scene and local emergency scanner traffic. Omaha Scanner, a Twitter account that monitors emergency scanner traffic, said seven people were taken to the hospital, but later tweeted that officials would have the exact count Wednesday.
The president, who spoke for nearly an hour, wrapped up shortly before 9 p.m. Some people in his audience waited until after midnight for campaign buses to take them to their cars, which were parked miles away.
Walking out of the rally, The World-Herald saw two people receive help from Omaha police — an elderly woman who was warming up in the back of a police cruiser and a boy to whom an officer lent a blanket.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the president*'s campaign is a bit unstrung at the moment, which gives it something in common with its candidate. He goes to Michigan and seems to be ambivalent about whether or not kidnapping the state's governor is a good idea. And his Microbes Over America tour may be turning him into Typhoid Donnie. And now this debacle in Nebraska, where elderly people risked infection and/or pneumonia so he could pitch himself for one electoral vote.
Trump campaign officials said they had enough buses ready nearby to shuttle people back to their cars, but said a larger-than-expected crowd, estimated as high as 29,000, slowed the buses’ return.
Traffic leaving an Eppley parking lot after the rally added to the delays. That left masses of people huddled in 31-degree weather along two-lane Lindbergh Plaza. Some tried walking back to their cars, pouring into the street, which slowed exiting traffic as well.
Am I being too cynical because I suspect that the whole fiasco was arranged so that the "Trump campaign officials" could hype the crowd size as being larger than expected? Am I being too cynical if I speculate—And it would be irresponsible not to, right, Peggy?—that maybe, in keeping with the president*'s general business strategy, the campaign stiffed the shuttle bus company?
Kris Beckenbach of Lincoln volunteered to help at the rally. She said Wednesday morning that she finally made it back to her car at 12:15 a.m. "We were all parked over at Eppley," she said. "We were 3½ miles through darkness to get there.
There was no direction given. I expected at the end of the rally somebody will say, 'Go this way and there will be buses waiting.'" Buses came, she said, but "they didn't come back for an hour and a half." She didn't blame organizers, however. "How do you practice for that?" she said, noting the thousands of people who attended.
Yes, how can you possibly predict that Omaha will be cold at midnight in late October? How can anyone predict that the possibility of having elderly people milling around in the dark might require overestimating the number of shuttle buses you need? And, why the hell not? Blame them.
Some people weren't dressed for the cold, Beckenbach said: "For some people, it was really rough." She noted that she saw emergency responders taking some people out. "When you go to a Husker game, when you go to any big event," she said, "you expect that you're going to have to take care of yourself and there's going to be waiting."
So too the same precautions, one would've thunk, going to a hustler's game.
Beckenbach said she didn't hear anyone "talking inappropriately to anyone else. People were respectful. We all just got tired and cold." The Trump supporter said she would do it all again: "I would go up early and stand there all those hours. It was an adventure. It was absolutely an adventure."
Suck it up, Gramma.