President says ‘74K requests’ for rally tix
If true, that dwarfs 20K space in Amway arena
President Trump said on Twitter that there have been 74,000 requests to attend his campaign kickoff event at the Amway Center in Orlando on Tuesday, though he acknowledges the venue does not have anywhere near that capacity.
“Wow! Just got word that our June 18th, Tuesday, ANNOUNCEMENT in Orlando, Florida, already has 74,000 requests for a 20,000 seat Arena,” Trump wrote. “With all of the big events that we have done, this ticket looks to be the ‘hottest’ of them all. See you in Florida!”
Amway’s capacity of 20,000 is listed as its NCAA basketball crowd size. Center stage concerts hold 19,700 and end-stage concerts hold about 16,000.
Many previous Trump rallies have included standing-roomonly areas.
Orange County GOP Chair Charles Hart said that the request-to-availability ratio for tickets to the event is “epic even for his rallies. … This is a phenomenally hot ticket.”
Hart said tickets to the event have already been distributed through the Trump campaign website, in which anyone could request one or two tickets and confirm their requests through text verification.
He added that Republican clubs from The Villages, Miami and other Florida cities have chartered buses to bring people to the event.
Whether supporters who can’t get in the building will be allowed to watch on screens outside, as in other Trump events, is unclear.
The U.S. Secret Service is planning to establish a “secured perimeter,” according to the Orlando Police Department, and locations for protests were also being determined. But police said Wednesday that people will be allowed outside the ticketed area
of the Amway Center.
“The campaign is hosting this event and it is ultimately their decision whether screens will be available on the outside for viewing,” Sgt. Eduardo Bernal and Police spokesman Cory Burkarth said in an email.
Hart said his organization is planning to hold a watch party, adding, “the people that want to hear him speak, [Trump] is not going to leave them high and dry.”
Trump’s most recent rallies in Florida include crowd estimates of about 3,000 at the Pensacola International Airport in November, according to the Pensacola News Journal, about 10,000 at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa in July 2018, the Tampa Bay Times reported, and about 9,000 for what was officially Trump’s first 2020 campaign event in February 2017 at the Orlando Melbourne International Airport in Melbourne.
However, Trump has gotten criticism for inflating the size of his rallies and events. In February, Trump told a rally crowd at the 6,500-person capacity El Paso County Coliseum that his campaign got special permission from the fire department to let 10,000 inside the building, the El Paso Times reported.
An El Paso Fire Department spokesman later told the Times the president was incorrect and only 6,500 were inside. “It might be 10,000 [including] the people outside,” he said, but the fire department did not keep track of those outside the building.
In October, Trump told a rally in Houston that 50,000 people were watching the event outside the Toyota Center, Newsweek reported, but Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo later said only 3,000 were outside.
Trump also claimed in September that 45,000 supporters were outside his event at an arena in Springfield, Missouri, according to Newsweek, which the city later denied and said 11,000 were inside and 1,000 outside.
Hart, though, said the interest and requests both his organization and the campaign have received makes him believe the Orlando event will have no issue hitting capacity inside the building.
“I suspect turnout is going to be tremendous,” Hart said. “It’s an historic event for Florida.”