US President Donald Trump is reportedly “furious” over the low turnout at his first re-election campaign rally in months.
K-pop stans and teens on TikTok claim they’re partially responsible.
The New York Times reports that Trump’s event in Tulsa, Oklahoma – his first in three months, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic – drew approximately 6,200 fans.
That’s way, way short of initial attendance estimates, and event organisers even dismantled a secondary outdoors rally area for the fans who never rocked up.
The low turnout for Saturday’s rally wouldn’t have been such a shock if Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, hadn’t tweeted that more than one million people had registered for tickets.
Now, the Times reports that a coordinated troll campaign saw those registration numbers artificially inflated by folks who wanted to fuck with Trump’s reelection campaign.
According to the paper, TikTok users discovered it was possible to sign up for tickets and simply not attend, boosting the figures and potentially leaving empty seats across the Tulsa arena.
K-pop stans on Twitter reportedly adopted a similar strategy. A real meeting of the minds.
A thread of some of the TikTokers/Zoomers who reserved tickets to Trump’s rally to shrink the crowd today in Oklahoma 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/ITz4NAbeTD
— Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) June 21, 2020
— Jenna Amatulli (@ohheyjenna) June 21, 2020
Teens fucking with online registration forms isn’t the whole story, mind you.
The registration process didn’t guarantee tickets to anyone, but the bogus numbers did fuck with attendance expectations.
Remember Parscale tweeting out that figure about a million people wanting in? Well, it’s likely that genuine fans may have been discouraged by seeing those numbers.
Plus, we have to consider the Trump team’s prior form in over-estimating crowd figures. A million people? For a rally in Oklahoma?
Then there’s the whole pandemic thing. Despite Trump’s erratic and dogshit poor handling of the crisis, it’s likely that the whole coronavirus situation kept some of the Trump faithful at bay.
So, what does that leave us with? An underwhelming rally for the incumbent president, a victory lap for extremely online teens, and a vision of trolling tactics to come. Sksksk, indeed.
Trump: A MILLION PEOPLE ARE COMING TO SEE ME
Kpop fans:
BETpic.twitter.com/bfPy4OqJOR— 🐻𝕚𝕂𝕆ℕ𝕀ℂ 엄마곰🐻 (@OMGnani__2) June 21, 2020
