The Trump era has afforded few moments of genuine catharsis. Utterly lacking in shame and unafraid of uttering the most egregious falsehoods, the president has an undeniable knack for bloviating his way through the most embarrassing situations or scandals. Among those anticipating Trump’s defeat in the fall, his disastrous rally in Tulsa last weekend therefore carried a certain poetic justice.

Billing the event as a comeback and clearly aiming to showcase grassroots strength in a city he carried in a landslide four years ago, the president played the hits and delivered a lengthy speech that featured all the usual bluster, but fell far short of its intended impact. Even the most zealous Republican partisans have since struggled to spin the evening as a success: the BOK Center, a 19,000-seat stadium where the rally took place, remained half empty, and plans for the president to make a second speech outside were hastily scrapped as sparse attendance failed to deliver a necessary cheering section.

Despite initial boasts from the campaign that it had received a million ticket requests, the crowd that materialized was scarcely worthy of a Boomtown Rats reunion tour — a reality Trump himself appeared to grasp when he disembarked at Andrews Air Force Base a few hours later.