TRUMP RALLY: WRONG NAME, WRONG LOCALE, WRONG SPONSORS

President Trump is holding a rally right now to pat himself on the back for withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement:

President Donald Trump’s campaign announced a “Pittsburgh, not Paris” rally across from the White House on Saturday to celebrate the United States’ withdrawal from a global climate agreement.

The Fairfax County Republican Committee and the Republican Party of Virginia are sponsoring the rally in Lafayette Square, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, according to an announcement from the Trump campaign.

How many ways is Trump getting this wrong? You probably know that Pittsburgh is no longer a steel town, but has now reinvented itself as a post-industrial city:

Today, Pittsburgh's biggest employer is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Its other university, Carnegie Mellon, is home to a world-renowned robotics laboratory. The Golden Triangle is a landmark of downtown renewal.

The unemployment rate in the Pittsburgh metro area is a low 4.8%. And the city, which cast approximately 80% of its vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, backs action on climate change. (Mayor Bill Peduto reaffirmed this in an executive order issued yesterday.)

But the rally isn't in Pittsburgh -- it's in Washington, D.C., in a square named after a French hero of the American Revolution. And it's sponsored by Republican groups based in ... Virginia? And not just a state group (remember that Hillary Clinton won the state by 5 points) but a group from Fairfax County, which is also not Trump country:

In the 2016 general election, Fairfax continued its trend towards Democratic candidates. Congressmen Beyer (D) and Connolly (D) were reelected, the latter of whom ran unopposed. Further, despite Donald Trump's victory in the Electoral College, Fairfax County supported Hillary Clinton with 64.4% of the vote to Trump's 28.6%, mirroring a heavy swing towards Democrats in Northern Virginia.

Fairfax County is not a working-class area -- only 26% of its workers are blue-collar. Here are the county's largest employers:



It's actually the second-wealthiest county in America, and was the first to have a six-figure median household income.

But I know, I know: I'm missing the point. Trump voters don't know any of this. They only know what they learn from their favorite TV broadcasters -- Fox News and Trump himself. If they say this is a rally about blue-collar workers in industrial Pittsburgh, then it's a rally about blue-collar workers in industrial Pittsburgh, and all of us smart-alecky liberals with our "facts" and our "data" should just shut the hell up.