TikTok, Trump time
PRESIDENT FIERY: BUT CROWD FAR LESS THAN 100 000
Tulsa – TikTok users took partial credit for inflating attendance expectations at a less-than-full arena at President Donald Trump’s first political rally in months, held in Tulsa on Saturday.
Social media users on platforms including the popular video-sharing app have said they completed the free online registration for the rally with no intention of going. The New York Times reported that fans of Korean pop music were encouraging people to do the same.
Prior to the event, Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale said there had been more than one million requests to attend. However, the 19 000-seat arena had many empty seats on Saturday evening.
A Tulsa Fire Department spokesman said the crowd was tallied at about 6 200 people.
Blasts his election rival, Joe Biden, as a ‘helpless puppet of the radical left’.
US President Donald Trump returned on Saturday to one of his favourite spots – a campaign rally stage – defying the pandemic and attacking Democratic rivals at an event with crowds far smaller than promised.
Gathering his political faithful for a much-hyped rally in Oklahoma, his first in three months, the Republican president sought to reinvigorate his flagging campaign in the face of a crushing health and economic crisis, as well as protests against racial injustice that have swept the nation in recent weeks.
Trump all but claimed victory over the pandemic that has killed about 120 000 Americans – “I have done a phenomenal job with it!” he insisted – even as six members of his own Tulsa advance team tested positive for Covid-19.
The event – which the White House promised would be flooded with up to 100 000 people, but actually did not fill the 19 000-seat arena where Trump spoke – has emerged as a flashpoint in the pandemic era.
But Trump was more interested in reviving his political fortunes after several bruising weeks that saw continued economic woes tied to the pandemic, nationwide protests over racial injustice and critics, including former aides, savaging his performance.
“The silent majority is stronger than ever before,” Trump said in a rowdy, freewheeling speech in which he blasted his 2020 election rival, Democrat Joe Biden, as a “helpless puppet of the radical left”.
Many rally-goers wore red “Make America Great Again” hats or T-shirts, but very few wore masks and there was little social distancing.
The president suggested that the “double-edged sword” of comprehensive coronavirus testing had led to the US having the world’s highest number of cases.
“Here is the bad part: when you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued.
“So I said to my people, ‘slow the testing down’,” he boomed.
A White House official later said that Trump was joking. – AFP