President Donald Trump leaves the stage at a rally at the Mitchell Center at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama, October 2, 2026. REUTERS/Jessica Koscielniak
As President Donald Trump gets back on the road to host political rallies across the country, he is running into a "new, very embarrassing problem," and according to a new piece from The i Paper, it is an issue that also foretells the death of his MAGA movement sooner than expected.
In recent weeks, Trump has been making numerous rally appearances in safe red states, hoping to stave off the worst-case scenario for Republican losses in a midterm blue wave blowout, where Democrats appear to have serious momentum in states where they are not normally competitive. Despite passing through red states that he won handily in 2024, such is Trump's diminished popularity that he is being met with a problem that cuts straight to his attention-staved ego: a noticeable number of empty seats at his rally venues.
Writing for The i Paper on Monday, columnist James Ball dug deeper into this growing new issue for Trump, noting that his boasts about the venues being packed to the rafters are looking increasingly pitiful in the face of reality.
"As the camera panned around the San Antonio’s Freeman Coliseum as Trump spoke earlier this month, anyone looking at the crowd would see the upper tier was sparsely populated," Ball wrote. "Trump himself noticed from the podium, blustering to explain away the gaps like a schoolchild claiming they really did have a girlfriend, only she goes to another school. In Canada... Even this was better than Trump’s rally in Kentucky, a state he won by 30 points, on Saturday, where the entire upper level of the arena was left completely empty, leading the New York Times to note a comment from an anonymous staffer, who 'said they had expected a larger audience than was on hand.'"
He added: "Rallies are not attended by floating voters or people who vote for the lesser of two evils – the people who go to these events know that they will be queuing up for hours, will have to go through security screening and then will have to wait again for Trump to start speaking. Given Trump’s meandering speaking style, that might take hours, too."
Ball argued that these thinning rally crowds seem to back up the idea that has emerged in certain polls, that a notable segment of Trump's MAGA base is starting to abandon him. The trend is certain to hit Trump's ego, as he has in the past boasted about selling out massive venues with the same passion that he usually reserved for boasting about his ability to pull TV ratings.
Beyond just his ego, though, Ball suggested that the trend sends a chilling message to the GOP about the sturdiness and longevity of the MAGA movement overall.
"Few things will hit Trump harder than the idea that he can’t thrill a crowd of his supporters any more," he concluded. "But those who wish to succeed him as president will be taking notice: if Trump can’t pack out an arena any more, perhaps the MAGA coalition won’t outlive the Trump presidency, after all."