Sunday, June 21, 2020

How many people went to the Trump presidential campaign rally in Tulsa on June 20th?

















Far fewer than you might have expected. It was held in the BOK Center which holds 19,200 people. An article at OAN Newsroom on June 17, 2020 said Vice President Pence: Trump campaign seeking second venue for rally in Tulsa, Okla. based on Trump having proudly tweeted that over 52 times that number had ordered tickets:

“Almost One Million people request tickets for the Saturday Night Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma!”

But those who requested tickets had to agree with a disclaimer, as Ryan Nobles reported at CNN Politics on June 13, 2020 in an article titled Trump campaign says it can’t be held liable if rally attendees contract coronavirus. At Forbes on June 21, 2020 there was an article by Andrew Solender reporting the Fire Department’s estimate that Turnout at Trump’s Tulsa rally was just under 6,200 – a fraction of the venue’s capacity. (Just a third).The campaign later claimed about 12,000 went through metal detectors.
















I looked at a YouTube video and saw that just before Trump came out to begin his speech, as shown above, the upper seats were almost empty. They didn’t need the second venue. A better view of the audience is shown at 0:35 in a video contained in an article from CNN titled Trump's campaign was trolled by TikTok users in Tulsa.  






















What had happened? Look at the sharply rising state figures for coronavirus shown above. Did many people come to their senses and decide that being exposed to a virus pandemic was not worth it?

Other powerful social media factors also may have been present. An article by Laura Italiano at the New York Post on June 21, 2020 said that Organized TikTok campaigns jammed up Trump rally tickets by hundreds. Another article by Joshua Bote at USA Today said K-pop stans, teens on TikTok may have inflated expected turnout to Trump’s Tulsa rally. Still another article by Daniel Kreps at Rolling Stone predictably said Trump campaign denies K-pop fans, TikTok users caused sparsely attended Tulsa rally. An article by Richard Wolffe at The Guardian summed things up by saying Don’t call it a comeback: Trump’s Tulsa rally was just another sad farce.

No comments: