“Boats bearing Trump flags have participated in parades all around the country in recent months — or at least in the parts of the country with access to waterways and nationalist anger. The boats slowly follow each other single file, so their owners can safely express their increasingly unpopular presidential choice only to each other and to animals that can’t express themselves vocally” writes Joel Stein in The LA Times.
“Trump has embraced the boat parades as a drowning man would a life preserver. In June, he tweeted a video of a Trump flotilla thanking ‘our beautiful boaters’ and promising, ‘I will never let you down!’ In July, he released a press statement gloating about how Joe Biden hadn’t made a hit with the flotilla folk. It was headlined, ‘NO BOAT PARADES: ENTHUSIASM FOR JOE BIDEN IS SINKING.’ And his campaign’s Twitter account rubbed sea salt in the wound. ‘Did you know there has NEVER been a Biden boat parade? How sad! There is no enthusiasm for Sleepy Joe.’ He has asked his advisors to organize more boat rallies and (joking or not joking or semi-joking) asked, ‘Are we polling the boaters yet?’ At a recent event in Florida, Trump said, ‘You see the boaters out. There are thousands and thousands of boats every weekend, and we appreciate it, but nobody has seen anything like it, ever.'”