PATHETIC LOSER TRUMP IS STILL OBSESSED WITH CROWD SIZE

The headline of this Fox story is "Trump Says He Requested 10K National Guard Troops at Capitol on Day of Riot."

Former President Trump told Fox News late Sunday that he expressed concern over the crowd size near the Capitol days before last month's deadly riots and personally requested 10,000 National Guard troops be deployed in response.

Trump told "The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton" that his team alerted the Department of Defense days before the rally that crowds might be larger than anticipated and 10,000 national guardsmen should be ready to deploy. He said that -- from what he understands -- the warning was passed along to leaders at the Capitol, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- and he heard that the request was rejected because these leaders did not like the optics of 10,000 troops at the Capitol.

"So, you know, that was a big mistake," he said.

You know something I just remembered, Steve? I had a plan to keep this under control! I totally forgot to mention that over the past month and a half, but it's true, swear to God! The problem is, no one would listen to my plan, even though I'm the president! That's what Trump wants us to believe.

But what's really hilarious about this claim is that Trump prefaced it with a boast about crowd size. Four years after he threw a fit when it was pointed out that his inaugural crowd was smaller than Obama's, he's still obsessed.

Watch:

Trump called in to Fox News after his CPAC speech and was asked by Steve Hilton about his response to the January 6 insurrection. He tried to shift blame to Pelosi before resorting to Black Lives Matter whataboutism. pic.twitter.com/5tjXcs12hF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 1, 2021

STEVE HILTON: ... when that was unfolding, you were watching, and actually you liked what you were seeing because you felt that it was your people fighting for you. Do you get how bad it was, and is there anything, looking back, that you would have done differently that day?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, that's incorrect reporting. First of all, I wasn't watching TV. I turned it on later on when I heard about it, and did a lot of moves. You know, we said to the, uh, Department of Defense, the top person, days before we had the rally, 'cause that rally was massive, I mean, you have -- they don't -- the press doesn't like to talk about, but the real number was much, much bigger in terms of the people that were at the location. It went all the way back practically to the Washington Monument. It was tremendous numbers of people. Not the Capitol -- I'm talking about the rally itself. And it was a love-fest. It was a beautiful thing. No, but we actually req-- I requested-- I said, "Look, this rally is going to be bigger than anyone thinks," 'cause everybody I'd see said, "Oh, we're going to be at the rally, we're going to be at the rally," and it had a-- it was, I think, the largest crowd that I've ever spoken before, and I've spoken -- very big crowds. Hundreds of thousands of people, and more than that -- but hundreds of thousands of people.

"Hundreds of thousands of people, and more than that." That's so Trump.

(It's hard to find estimates of the crowd size at the rally, but the inaugural that became such a sensitive subject for Trump in the years to come probably had a crowd of 300,000 to 600,000 people, and it's highly unlikely that the January 6 crowd was bigger. The rally permit was for a crowd size of 30,000. A data journalist named Stephen Doig said, "I’m perfectly prepared to believe there were several thousand people there, even 10,000 maybe. But when you start pushing that up to 100,000 and so on, that’s not going to be true" -- but this is a reference to the crowd that stormed the Capitol, not to the original rally.)

Trump went on to tell Hilton:

And I said that I think he should have ten thousand -- I think I gave the number. I definitely gave the number of ten thousand National Guardsmen. I think you should have ten thousand of the National Guard ready. But they took that number, from what I understand, they gave it to the people at the Capitol, which is controlled by Pelosi, and I heard they rejected it because they didn't think it looked good.

These were Trump's people, this was going to be a "love-fest," but Trump wanted ten thousand National Guard troops to do crowd control of his own fans. Sure, that's plausible.

Trump's obsession with crowd size is shared by many of his supporters, who believe that the crowds Trump draws are incontrovertible proof that Joe Biden couldn't have won the election, or at least that Biden is a pathetic loser. We saw this again over the weekend.

Do you think it’s depressing for @JoeBiden to realize that more people will tune into Donald Trump’s CPAC speech today than any speech Joe has ever given or will ever give?

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) February 28, 2021

And from Gateway Pundit:

Biden Will Never Experience This: Crowd at CPAC Erupts in Chant of ‘We Love You’ During Trump’s Speech

In a touching moment, one which Joe Biden will surely never see anything comparable to, the crowd at CPAC erupted in a loud chant of “we love you” during former President Donald Trump’s CPAC speech.

I think some of this derives from the right's Hollywood obsession -- they've been jealous of the star power of liberal celebrities for decades, so they cling to the notion that Trump is a bigger celebrity than Biden as if it matters.

It doesn't. Biden is president. Trump isn't. Period.