WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump's rallies have been compared to Grateful Dead concerts, not just because they attract hard-core fans who see themselves as part of a community, but also because they offer a rhetorical playlist that is at once predictable yet apt to surprise.
The standards bring chant-along excitement: "Build the wall!" "Lock her up!" "Fake news!"
The improvisational riffs elicit applause and laughs: "Upstairs, downstairs, where was it? I don't know. But I had one beer. That's the only thing I remember," Trump said last week in Southaven, Miss., in a lengthy mockery of Christine Blasey Ford's claim of sexual assault years before by Brett Kavanaugh.
Nearly two years into his presidency, these operatic, roughly 80-minute performances offer the most tangible proof that Trump has never left the campaign trail, or sought to expand his fan base. All sitting presidents do a fair amount of campaigning and fundraising. None has started earlier or sustained it like Trump, who held nine rallies in the weeks after winning election and then hit the road again within a month of taking office _ Tuesday's rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, was his 32nd since his inaugural.
Trump's devotion to the roadshows demonstrates just how much he ties his success to the adulation of his most loyal fans and also, aides say, how much he craves it. As Democrats threaten to retake Congress in next month's election, Trump has revved up Air Force One. Last week, he hit Tennessee, Mississippi, Minnesota and Kansas. This week he is playing back-to-back evenings in Iowa and Pennsylvania, then has a night off before gigs in Kentucky and Ohio.
Political consultants, psychologists, sociologists and historians see them as essential texts for deciphering the Trump movement. "These are like morality plays," said Stephen D. Reicher, a psychology professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied Trump rallies for what they reflect about crowd behavior, leadership and collective action.
"They are performances which enact Trump's view of the world."
Here, then, is something of a playbill:
