After a smaller than expected turnout at President Donald Trump’s first campaign rally in months, his campaign is denying that TikTok users played a role in the low turn out.
Ahead of his rally, Trump took to Twitter to boast that “almost One Million people” had requested tickets to the rally.
But on Saturday, it quickly became clear that the number of participants would be far short of what the campaign was expecting. Images promptly spread of a near-empty overflow location and several empty seats at the BOK Center where Trump was speaking.
Birdseye view of the more than half-empty Trump rally…pic.twitter.com/4JtbdCQpoO
— Rex Chapman?? (@RexChapman) June 20, 2020
This is what overflow looks like at the Trump rally in Tulsa right now. Pence is scheduled to speak out here in about 10 minutes. People still streaming in but not nearly the number the campaign said they were expecting. pic.twitter.com/hbypfviOxv
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 20, 2020
In a statement on Sunday, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said, “Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop fans – without contacting the campaign for comment – behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.”
The New York Times reports that TikTok users and K-Pop fans requested hundreds of thousands of tickets for the rally, with no intention of showing up, to embarrass the president by leaving thousands of empty seats.
However, Parscale said, “Registering for a rally means you’ve RSVPed with a cell phone number and we constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally, in calculating our possible attendee pool.”
“These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking. What makes this lame attempt at hacking our events even more foolish is the fact that every rally is general admission – entry is on a first-come-first-served basis, and prior registration is not required,” he added.
Instead, he claimed that a “week’s worth of fake news media” about an increase in COVID-19 cases and protests in Tulsa had contributed to the low turn out.
“For the media to now celebrate the fear that they helped create is disgusting, but typical. And it makes us wonder why we bother credentialing media for events when they don’t do their full jobs as professionals,” Parscale said.
The Tulsa Fire Department estimated that roughly 6,200 people attended the rally, the BOK Center has a mass occupancy of approximately 19,000 attendees.
Despite Parscale’s claim that protesters had contributed to the small crowds, reporters noted that there were few protesters in the area on Saturday night.
The disappointing showing quickly drew mockery on social media, as IJR reported.
