Cons in Canada have taken to doing this shit as well. It’s fucking embarassing to see, but not surprising.

Completely staged. That’s why we don’t take it seriously in the US.

This happens in Canada as well. The way I see it is it’s supposed to show support for the candidate in question.

In Germany, we’d probably consider this “weird” in case our politicians did that.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a politician getting applauded regularily, outside maybe of a talkshow setting. And not during a speech, maybe at the end when they finished. They also don’t really take center stage to give big speeches all that often. And having 7 presidents means less cult of personality.

It mostly looks like This is one of the presidents giving a press conference, with several experts/advisors next to him (and more experts in the front row, should more specific questions come up). The rest are journalists. I’d say press conferences make up the majority of appearances, so there’s no crowds/“fans”. Heck even the concept of a fan of one of the presidents sounds weird. Maybe for the parties, but I have never heard of anyone being a fan of one of the presidents.

Then there’s other events, but even for national day celebration speeches, it’s nothing crazy, this has some pictures of several of the presidents giving various national day speeches last year. No people in the background. But then I don’t think most people really watch any of this, so why bother?

I can see why Germany would not be receptive of large political rallies based on recent history. The same should be the case in the US. But yet here we are.

I know you asked for non-USA opinions, but as someone from the USA, I have always thought this was weird. Not only are they either fake or paid or self-centered extreme fans, but they got to sign away their “show up on TV and photos” rights, all for the privilege of looking at Trump’s ass while he speaks. Worst seat in the house.

I’m in the UK, and politicians do this too at campaign rallies now, and have done so for some years. We certainly took this from US style electioneering.

It’s all about optics - it supposedly looks good for a politician to be talking and people enthusiastically cheering on in the background. It kind of makes sense if you accept that all that will be shown on TV or social media is a clip from a speech, so you want to try and package that with as positive a spin on it as possible. The political party can control the background this way and it’s impossible for the media companies to edit it out.

I can’t speak for other European countries, but I have seen clips from other electioneering videos with a similar set up, so it’s not just the US and the UK. For example: This article from SBS in Australia (one of their public service broadcasters) has a picture of exactly this phenomenon: https://www.sbs.com.au/language/gujarati/en/article/profile-of-australian-labor-party/ji29c0grz

But I’m pretty certain we in the UK took this from the US in the last 15-20 years maybe? I don’t know if it came from somewhere else before? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s older than we think!

Heads up: we also clap when the plane lands.

Nah, North Korea do it

This happens a lot in Prime Minister question time because the people sitting next and behind them are their own party people.

Couldn’t they be paid actors?

I sometimes see this with public speakers, but it’s rare that the audience is in the background. Creepy, I’d say.

look dear viewer! regular Joe shmoes like you really like my back! clap together now!

Im not sure when it started and seems to be more vigourously done with republicans. It was not always so or at least rallies were not televised so much.