Trump rallies are becoming a thing of the past as crowds grow bored with his rants: report

With the 2024 presidential election just one year away, the seemingly weekly Donald Trump campaign rallies have been dialed back due to his burgeoning legal problems, cash-flow issues and a growing acknowledgment that crowds are growing tired of his rants that often go off-script, leaving fans looking for the exits.

According to a report from the Daily Beast, in 2016 during Trump first presidential run he held 323 rallies before the election. In 2020, in his losing bid for re-election, he still managed to squeeze in up to three in a day once the Covid crisis abated.

For his third run, he is down to two a month prior to the Iowa caucus.

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The reason for the decline is a reflection of his time spent dealing with his four indictments in four different jurisdictions, the amount of money that could have been spent on his rallies -- which can cost up to $2 million to pull off -- that is being paid to his lawyers, and also fears of what he might say.

As one former close Trump advisor bluntly put it, "Honestly, given he has legal risk on many fronts, I’d probably do the same just to minimize anything that would f*ck up his legal defense."

Add to that, recent Trump speeches have been falling flat, leaving the former president speaking to a rapidly-emptying room.

Case in point, the Beast's Jake Lahut reports a Trump rally earlier this week went off the rails as the president went off script and baffled the crowd with a rant about... McDonald's.

Trump complained about seeing “containers of McDonald’s where the container is six months old, cars have been riding on it, water has been raining on it,” adding, "It’s disgusting, what happened. It will be a part of my election—you know, it’s been a part of my election platform.”

According to Lahut, "When the McDonald’s container plank of his campaign platform didn’t quite land with the crowd, Trump tried reverting to one of his greatest hits," by asking the crowd if they would like his rally fall back: a recitation of "The Snake."

"''Does anybody want to hear The Snake?' Trump said to moderate applause—referring to the Al Wilson soul tune, which Trump delivers in his own version of beat poetry—after some attendees began to make their way for the exits. (Beating traffic is almost as revered a pastime at Trump rallies compared to sporting a MAGA hat)," Lahut wrote before adding, "One person clapped. The rest of the room, apparently, had heard the bit before, to which Trump replied, 'OK, good, like 45 percent of the room,' before going ahead as people filtered out."

You can read more here.