Trump support falls in comeback rally
DONALD TRUMP’S comeback rally after more than three months saw the US president address a far smaller crowd than expected, triggering embarrassing headlines on a night when he also mentioned slowing Covid-19 testing.
Mr Trump and his team had said earlier in the week that a million ticket requests had been made for his speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but on the night just short of 6,200 people turned up, according to the city’s fire department.
An outdoor overflow stage had been constructed so that Mr Trump could speak to those who failed to get in, but that address was cancelled.
The Trump campaign blamed “radical protesters” and the media for scaring away likely attendees amid fears of clashes and coronavirus spreading in the indoor venue – though there was little evidence of protest groups.
Another potential explanation emerged as it became clear scores of videos had been posted on Tiktok, the video sharing social network, of youngsters signing up for tickets and pledging not to turn up, joking that empty seats would look bad for Mr Trump.
There was also speculation that fans of Korean pop music, who have a sizeable presence on social media and have used their numbers to disrupt events critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, could also have pushed up ticket requests. The Trump campaign denied this was a factor.
When the president took to the stage, the higher of two blocks of seating in the BOK Center was practically empty.
“You are warriors,” Mr Trump said at the start of his speech, appearing to acknowledge the turnout issue. “We had some very bad people outside,” he added, echoing his campaign’s claims.
Andy Little, the public information officer at the Tulsa Fire Department, confirmed that just under 6,200 people attended – about a third of capacity.
The crowd was still much larger than those drawn by Joe Biden, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, during his primary run earlier this year – a point made by the Trump campaign.
However, it was the gulf between the mass crowds that the president and his team had predicted earlier in the week and the comparatively small numbers that turned up which caused the political embarrassment.
Mr Trump had said that not just the arena but a building next door would be filled up with supporters, saying: “We’ve never had an empty seat and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma.”
The campaign denied that Tiktok users had duped them, saying all registrations with fake details were weeded out and it is a first-come-first serve system which had no seat reservations.
During the speech, Mr Trump called Covid-19 testing a “double-edged sword” because it can result in high case numbers being registered, saying: “I said to my people ‘slow the testing down please’.” A White House official said the president “was obviously kidding”, when discussing if Mr Trump had really asked for slower testing.
Mr Trump also referred to coronavirus as “kung flu” during a riff about how many different names there were for it, reigniting a row about whether the term was racist given the virus first emerged from China.
Elsewhere, Mr Trump proposed jailing people for a year if they burned the American flag, and gave a defence of a clip of him walking slowly down a ramp, which triggered questions about his health.
Mr Trump also predicted he would be re-elected in November. “We’ll do it one more time,” he said.