During a panel discussion on Tuesday’s New Hampshire GOP primary, MSNBC contributor John Heilemann suggested that the enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s third run for the presidency, outside of his rabid base, is much less than it seems.
Speaking with hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Heilemann noted that Trump rallies lack the energy of his previous runs and that his rallies are poorly attended and have been moved to smaller venues to make the former president look better.
“I mean, look, Joe, you mentioned that event,” he began. “I was thinking about you on Saturday night. It’s the SNHU Arena across the street from where I am now. It’s a big sports arena, they do hockey games and basketball games stuff there. We were there together four years ago, Willie [Geist], you, me, [Mike] Barnicle. We were all out there, there was a huge snowstorm. It seats 10,000 people and it was packed to the gills in 2016. The other night here, there were empty seats all over the arena.”
“They said there were a few thousand people there, and there probably were a few thousand, but that seats 10,000; it was way less than half filled, and even in the lower level, you could see just seat after seat after seat with no one in it,” he reported. “Last night, you know, he did an event on Sunday night in Rochester: the place as a capacity of 700. I mean he filled 700 seats, but, you know, Trump used to brag about the 10,000 people, 12,000 people. ‘We kept 10,000 people outside, as far as the eye can see.'”
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“He is getting more people to turn out than Nikki Haley, but the phenomenon, the energy of Donald Trump that you saw on the ground here, that we saw on the ground here in 2016, to a lesser extent in 2020, partly because of the pandemic, it’s ebbed a great deal in this primary,” he added.