The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!

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Trump turns GOP voting pledge into comedy routine — and the media took the bait

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BS BULLETIN:

  • President Trump had the crowd at the Republican midterm convention raise their right hands and repeat a bizarre pledge to vote in November.
  • Trump deliberately stretched the “oath” into an absurd riff, joking about himself, cheating, voting Democratic and even going to hell for staying home.
  • Some coverage portrayed the scene as a troubling loyalty pledge, while other observers — and even some straight-news reporting — recognized that Trump was openly joking with the audience.

President Donald Trump wanted Republicans to promise they would vote in November.

He certainly found an unusual way to get the promise.

Closing out the Republican midterm convention in Dallas Thursday night, Trump asked thousands of supporters to raise their right hands and repeat after him as he launched into what initially resembled a solemn pledge.

It didn’t stay solemn for long.

“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States,” Trump began, before piling more words onto the sentence until the audience struggled to keep up.

Trump continued by having supporters promise to get their families and friends to the polls, then threw in a crack about trying to “cheat like hell like they do.”

The crowd laughed. Trump kept going.

At another point, he told attendees they were free to vote for a Democrat if they wanted — prompting boos — before finishing the routine with “so help me God.”

And then there was Trump’s rather unconventional get-out-the-vote message: “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell.”

The performance quickly generated headlines portraying the scene as an extraordinary Trump loyalty oath.

Mediaite described Trump as having the audience “pledge allegiance to the greatest president in the history of the United States,” while USA Today characterized the episode as supporters pledging allegiance to Trump.

But other accounts of the event acknowledged something fairly difficult to miss while watching the exchange: Trump was riffing.

The Washington Examiner reported that Trump began “having fun” and “riffing with the audience” before moving into what the outlet described as a “semi-serious pledge” intended to motivate Republican turnout.

That interpretation is also supported by Trump’s delivery. He deliberately made portions of the pledge too long for the audience to repeat, inserted the line about being the greatest president in American history, joked about voting Democratic and capped the whole thing with eternal damnation for anyone who stays home on Election Day.

Behind the comedy, however, was a very serious political concern.

Trump has repeatedly stressed that Republicans need his presidential-election voters to show up for a midterm in which his own name isn’t technically on the ballot. During the convention, he urged supporters to behave as though it were.

“I’m on the ticket,” Trump told Republicans, according to reporting from the convention.

Vice President JD Vance made a similar turnout appeal Thursday, asking Americans who disagree with Republicans on individual issues to nevertheless support GOP candidates in November.

MY QUICK TAKE

Trump’s secret remains remarkably effective: say something ridiculous with a grin, watch the room laugh — then wait for somebody to write the headline as though Moses just brought it down from Mount Sinai.

The serious message was vote. The rest sounded a whole lot like Trump being Trump.

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

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