Everything that happened here is obvious. Even the owner of the landscaping company didn't know what was going on, and wasn't there. (But she does have a merch site she is putting up today!) The part that gets me - and I figure is Act II in @kleinbloo@'s documentary of the day - is when the advance team drives up, packed into Escalades full of Mackie monitors, cables, promo posters, etc., and sees the gravel driveway... the chainlink fence... the porn store next door... THAT moment. That is when the people in the car knew it was over... but THE SHOW MUCH GO ON! So they chugged the last of their venti mocha with light whip and caramel swirls, put on their game faces, and jumped out of their vehicles. I'm visualizing a Tron-looking musical sequence inspired by the dance scene in The Big Lebowski, as we go into their heads and watch the twisting and machinations... as they try to come up with alternative plans... issue a correction/retraction... realize they can't because The Donald won't be happy with that... as they claw through boxes of excuses to figure out which lie to build a hill on top of... and when they notify the President that this isn't going to be a "big thing" and he doesn't need to attend at all... What a buncha clowns.
Agreed - the events are obvious. I think what we're all grappling with is the decision-making process, and the motives behind the events. They seem to reflect a lack of decorum that would be fatal to a wedding planner's business, let alone a presidential campaign manager's. Events are for the audience. The audience of true believers might in fact be 100% okay seeing Rudi Giuliani and Corey Lewandowski in a parking lot in a Philly industrial park. But they're the only ones. And even those dead-enders would rather see something presidential go down somewhere presidential. Look - there are like four parks within ten blocks. If I'm the guy on the ground I put a guy at Four Seasons Total Landscaping to tell all my party loyalists, and chosen mouthpieces, to go to this that or the other park. The guys that are going to mock me? That are there for the spectacle? I'll make 'em tail my loyalists if they want the press conference. You telling me the Trump campaign can't get the Philly police to hold off for a 20-minute press conference? I get my message out, I get to fool the Radical Left, I get to be clever and be seen as fighting back. ...or, I give a speech in front of fertilizer storage, across the street from a mortuary and adjacent to a dildo shop. You're right. What happened is obvious. Why it happened is not. I've worked student films with more ingenuity. It highlights two things to me: (1) Nobody who does this regularly is involved anymore, and we're talking "party planner" level professionalism (2) Nobody who is still there has the fundamental pragmatism or cunning to not airball the shit out of this.