Trump is fleeing to a safe space in Alabama where students will be punished for booing. Who's the snowflake now?

Just last week, the notoriously reclusive Trump ventured out into the unvetted wilds of Washington society to attend Game 5 of the World Series. It was a big moment: unlike his presidential predecessors, Trump’s exposure to the country he governs has been strictly limited to the frothing cheers of his cult-like rallies. This was a crowd unlike any Trump had faced as president.

Judging by the deafening boos and chants of “lock him up” that erupted immediately after his name was announced, it’s doubtful the president will be stopping by any future Washington sporting events. DC sports fans are unlikely to weep over his absence.

It didn’t take long for the right-wing media to melt down over such unprecedented rudeness towards a president who gleefully presides over the continued forced separation of immigrant families on the southern border. “They should hold those fans accountable,” Fox News regular Frank Luntz whined. “You don’t boo the president! You show respect to him!”

The fans filling Nationals Park that night were almost certainly more liberal than Trump’s far-right base. It would be easy to, as Laura Ingraham did, explain away Trump’s frosty reception by claiming Nationals fans aren’t real America.

If you want to visit red-blooded Republican Trump country, attend a mixed martial arts event like a UFC title bout. On November 2, the president, accompanied by his sons Donald and Eric and Republican lawmakers Kevin McCarthy, Mark Meadows and Peter King, did just that.

The response was swift and deafening: there, surrounded by conservative testosterone and Trump-like machismo, a mixed crowd lobbed jeers and insults at the stunned party. Some in the audience even held signs calling for Trump’s impeachment and removal. Trump looked on, stone-faced, uncertain how a crowd that proudly wore MAGA hats just three years ago could now be calling for his ousting.

The president’s overconfidence is understandable: for three years, he has barely left the White House. And he’s spent fully a third of his presidency vacationing at his resort hotels and golf courses.

When Trump does meet regular Americans, it almost always comes in the form of a carefully stage-managed rally surrounded by only his most zealous supporters. One die-hard Trump supporter interviewed by Vox recently attended his eighteenth rally.

In this bizarro world, every person Trump meets considers him the American Christ, a savior empowered to “drain the swamp” of corruption — which Trump rally attendees concede means whatever the president decides it means in the moment. But he is also an immensely prideful man, and he isn’t about to take two sustained booings in one week without fighting back.

This Saturday, Trump will try again to recapture public adulation when he visits the University of Alabama to attend a football game against LSU. His supporters aren’t taking any chances. A day after Trump’s announcement, the University of Alabama Student Government Association declared that any students caught “disrupting” Trump’s visit would lose their reserved seating for the remainder of the season.

You read that right: the same conservatives who cry that “the liberals” are killing free speech on college campuses unironically proposed punishing anyone who makes the president of the United States feel uncomfortable. Since the University of Alabama is a public university accepting government funding, the SGA’s threat constitutes a direct violation of students’ First Amendment right to criticize whoever they please.

Facing a national backlash for the sheer audacity of their hypocrisy, the SGA ‘clarified’ their statement by insisting that their thread had “nothing to do with anyone’s First Amendment rights.” The SGA can “affirm its belief in free speech” all it likes, but punishing students for “disruptive” behavior (to be determined, naturally, by the SGA) is a fundamental violation of free speech.

It also turns the University of Alabama into the world’s biggest safe space for a president who often draws rapturous applause by mocking liberal activists as oversensitive “snowflakes.”

Trump’s paper-thin skin is nothing new: he’s been sent into furies by everything from Saturday Night Live skits to a tough meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But there is something fundamentally different about the extreme ego-protection measures undertaken by the University of Alabama — it shows just how small Trump’s political world has become.

Three years of scandals and national disgraces have irreparably tarnished Trump’s brand not only among independents — he now loses that core electoral group to every Democratic challenger — but also among traditionally conservative American voters. The jeering crowds at last week’s UFC event are just the most visible sign of growing Trump fatigue.

The Donald may be able to cajole friendly audiences in Alabama into censoring his critics, but that doesn’t mean the critics are going away. Trump is heading into the most perilous stretch of his presidency to date. It increasingly looks like he’s doing so alone.