• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 11, 2024

I loved Barack Obama's "weird obsession" with crowd sizes sight gag when he delivered his speech endorsing Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, because it was so simple, so binary and was a visual way of framing one of the biggest issues concerning the Republican party's nominee.

I wasn't surprised, and I was tickled to see, the Harris/Walz team utilize the clip in this new campaign ad.

I've thought a lot about the what Obama was doing there, and this morning I published a "Fake News" strip on my personal b/log making the case that he was utilizing a device from one of the greatest ad campaigns ever conceived:

I borrow that big idea from Fallon McElligott Rice's "perception/reality" campaign for Rolling Stone a lot. In my post this morning, I use it to remind us that Trump's obsession with size isn't just the butt of an inferiority joke, but something sick and even criminal in his character.

He has already been found guilty of fraudulently inflating the size of his New York real estate assets, but on the morning of this hallowed American anniversary, I think it's important to remember that his first instinct after hearing the news 23 years ago was to inflate the size of one of his buildings standing in the ashes of the Twin Towers.

Remember what he said.