‘Turn it up. Great song!” Imagine those words—from the lips of your fearless leader and "protector" of women, Donald John Trump, to the haunting sounds of a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” blaring from the speakers—are the last thing you hear as the world around you fades.
Moments or maybe hours pass before you open your eyes and come to, sprawled out on a stretcher that’s wheeling you out of Trump’s town hall-turned-DJ-set in suburban Philadelphia. It’s Monday night, three weeks before Election Day.
You quickly learn you're one of several attendees who fainted from… something. The heat, maybe? Terminally online, fellow Trump supporters are still trying to figure that out—as of Tuesday, they’re debating whether the cascade of fainting pro-Trump town hall attendees were victims of “poisonous gas” or left-wing, George Soros-bought venue staff “turning the heat up” to deliberately give God-fearing patriots heat stroke.
You don’t hear about this, though, because you’re probably being tended to at some nearby emergency room. But once you and the one other fainter are dealt with, Trump starts cracking jokes to lighten the mood for all the remaining survivors at the venue. "Personally, I enjoy this. We lose weight. We can do this, lose four or five pounds, it's OK with me,” he says, in reference to the curiously warm room temperature. “They don't want to give us air conditioning… Would anybody else like to faint? Please raise your hand."
listening to "ave maria" blast over the sound system of an unventilated shipping warehouse while medics cart an endless stream of dehydrated 75 year olds past me on sweat-soaked gurneys and the former president does a little dance on stage. this must be what heaven is like https://t.co/P5g4jSmXaX
— america's lounge singer (@KrangTNelson) October 15, 2024
Trump's Monday night stop in Pennsylvania—alongside a certain GOP South Dakota governor who’s banned from every animal shelter in the nation—was originally billed as a Q&A-style town hall, so he could field questions from voters in a swing state that’s likely to decide the election. But that… is not what happened. Trump took a handful of questions over the course of about 30 minutes, then appeared to get bored. The remainder of the event was dedicated to Trump holding a room of his sycophants captive and forcing them to listen to his favorite songs.
“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music,” Trump said, calling on his staff to play “a couple of real beauties.” He continued, “Who the hell wants to hear questions?” And he knew exactly what he wanted: “How about this: We’ll play ‘YMCA.’” The rest of the evening’s set list reportedly included “Ave Maria,” “Time To Say Goodbye,” “It's A Man's World,” “Hallelujah,” “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “An American Trilogy,” “Rich Men North of Richmond,” “November Rain,” and “Memory from Cats.” (He at least knew better than to play “Who Let the Dogs Out” while standing next to Kristi Noem.)
The whole time, Trump soulfully gyrated, swayed, and appeared to disassociate, at times mouthing lyrics, like when “Nothing Compares 2 U” played. In the background, at least two supporters fainted and were collected from the room in stretchers. Trump acknowledged this in passing by, as you’ll recall, fat-shaming his audience members—but he otherwise stayed lost in the music. I guess now we know what the “DJ” in his initials, “DJT,” stands for.
Donald Trump is not well.
He ended his town hall early and then stood on the stage awkwardly for nearly 30 minutes while random music played over the P.A. pic.twitter.com/myhSbAxfdk
— Travis Akers (@travisakers) October 15, 2024
Some are now calling Trump “not well” and even a “sociopath” for joking and dancing after his own supporters fainted from being locked in a warm room for hours with him. I’d agree he’s a sociopath...but for all the other reasons. Sure, he could have given a more compassionate response to his supporters’ medical emergencies, but when you get used to watching people faint, at a certain point, you start to have less of a reaction. When I was in middle school, I went through something of a fainting phase myself. "Would anybody else like to faint? Please raise your hand,” became a pretty run-of-the-mill response from my dad as he and my sisters would watch me wheeled away in a stretcher on a particularly hot day. (It turns out I was iron-deficient—we’re all good now!)
As for the act of holding a room hostage and making them listen to all your favorite songs and watch you do a little dance??? Say what you will about Trump’s brand of fascism, but he certainly gets whimsical with it. In fact, it's got me thinking about what album I'd force my supporters to sit and listen to if I were running for president. Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence certainly comes to mind for me. And if I were in Wisconsin, probably Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
As Trump supporters keep asking their own questions—namely, how much Soros paid the venue staff to spill noxious gas into the room—I guess that's my question: What album would you make your supporters listen to if you were running as a dictatorial presidential candidate???
