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Let's Discuss Trump's Love For Political Rallies

by Korey Lane

It's been almost a month since Donald Trump was officially inaugurated as our nation's 45th president. After Trump won the election back in November, he went on a series of "victory tours" which had a lot of the same feel as his campaign rallies, even though he had already won. Now, even though Trump is literally our commander in chief, he is still campaigning, and seemingly trying to win over the American public. Saturday, Trump held an assembly in Florida in which he basically reenacted his campaign rallies: bragging about himself, dumping on the media, and repeating many of his campaign promises. But, as he's only been in office for less than a month, and the next election cycle is still years away, why is Trump holding rallies?

As Trump has made very clear with his statements and Twitter feed, he hasn't exactly been very amused with how the media has covered his first month in office. He has repeatedly skewered journalists for what he deems to be "fake news" (i.e. stories he doesn't like) and complained that the "failing" Saturday Night Live spews nothing but lies and purposefully makes his administration look bad. As this recent rally makes clear, Trump appears to be trying to amass more supporters in an apparent effort to bolster his (record low) approval ratings.

While the 2020 presidential election is still years away, it's expected that Trump will be the Republican nominee up for re-election (although an incumbent president has been denied re-nomination before) and it seems he has already started to campaign mighty hard to ensure he remains in power for eight full years.

Most of the news coverage of Trump's four weeks in office has been unanimously negative, according to him. (Trump was, however, quick to exclaim that the right-leaning "Fox and Friends is great!") No matter what picture he tries to paint, though, our president very much appears to be feeling a little insecure, and needs to be reassured that he still won the election — a troubling notion in times like these.

Trump also refuses to let anyone forget the number of Electoral College votes he got in the election (306!), and his rally this weekend in Florida proved that to be true. Speaking to a large crowd of supporters at the Orlando Melbourne International Airport Saturday, Trump exclaimed, "We're going to start winning again," and was met with raucous applause and chants to "drain the swamp."

Until 2020 comes around, it seems that Trump will continue to campaign, and try to gain more support from the people he claims to be representing — while arguably not doing that very thing at all.