Random love and abandoned love

Another case where if a fiction writer came up with this as a metaphor for Trump’s relationship with his base their editor would tell them to try to come up with something less heavy-handed:

Donald Trump made the unusual decision to hold a campaign event in Coachella, California on Saturday — a state that he’s undoubtedly set to lose in this year’s election — and bussed supporters 5 miles into the venue to do so. Unfortunately for thousands of those who showed up, the buses seemingly didn’t return to the venue late into the night, leaving many attendees stranded.

The story unfolded through a series of videos shared on social media Saturday night into Sunday. In a series of posts on X that were eventually deleted but were shared in screenshots, @WesleyxJohnson wrote that there was “only one bus in rotation” and “turnaround time for each drop off was 30 minutes,” with thousands waiting for said bus. Johnson added that there were originally 20-30 buses at the event.

He also charged that “something nefarious went down tonight to spark a riot.” Johnson later added that a bus driver told some abandoned attendees that “ALL of the fuel stations for BUSES (not cars) were completely depleted,” which meant some of the bus drivers were stranded without gas. “There were apparently 60 buses employed for this event,” he added, “and the fuel reserves were completely depleted or never refilled before the event.”

“Smells like sabotage!” Johnson asserted, without basis for his charge. He later explained that he deleted his initial posts “because I was hoping some help would come from it, but all it did was cause drama.”

“The buses had to drive 30 minutes out to find fuel and many didn’t return and some got stranded themselves trying to find fuel,” he added. “Then the CHP ordered the bus drivers to stop driving. This all came from the bus drivers updating us as we sat on the bus asking what happened. They and the Sheriffs were all just as confused as we were. My story stands, but the drama got out of hand.”

In a separate video re-shared on X, a man explained, “This isn’t normal. Apparently, the buses are no longer coming. Or at least there used to be like 20 buses when we were being brought here. But now there’s only like three buses operating, and it’s an absolute… It’s just chaos, absolute chaos. All of us are stranded here. Everyone’s stranded here.”

TikTok was also awash in videos from the event and its aftermath. The account @ohsorandom1977 shared several videos aggregated from attendees. One woman took to the social media platform to share that she and her husband were set to attend the event, but ended up missing it due to the tremendous crowds looking to attend — and apparently lacking logistics in support of those attending.

One advantage to having your core supporters overwhelmingly being conspiracy theorists is that it’s particularly easy to rationalize your total indifference to them as actually being someone else’s fault. I’m sure the consensus among the people Trump stranded in the desert is that Uncle Joe Brandon, Gavin Newscum and George Soros took the big, beautiful buses that Trump arranged so they could travel to North Carolina and steal the FEMA money.

This is particularly sad:

Tagging JD Vance is just sad. Are you Peter Thiel? If not, I guarantee he wouldn’t give you a second thought even if he saw your tweet, and on some level his fans must know this.

It’s also amusing that Trump is borrowing from the playbook of Karl Rove, who very nearly blew the 2000 election by wasting resources in California in the late stages of the race. Needless to say if Harris had done this there would be days of stories about her campaign was run by morons, but the structural advantages Republicans have let them get away with all kinds of dumb shit.