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According to multiple people close to the White House, President Donald Trump is “furious” about the “underwhelming crowd” at his Tulsa, Oklahoma rally. The rally took place on Saturday, June 20.
Recently, information also leaked that six Trump aides tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump is reportedly furious over that, too.
Trump was angry that the coronavirus story dominated media coverage of his rally. Further, attendance appeared to be far lower than he’d been touting on Twitter.
President Trump’s first campaign rally since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic didn’t go as expected. While the campaign said there were more than one million ticket requests, the 19,000 seat arena was left unfilled.
It is believed that teens on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter may have been responsible for the empty seats. Over the past few days, they RSVP’d with no intention of actually showing.
As a result, only a few thousand people showed up to attend the rally.
However, a Trump ally said, “It’s politics 101: You under-promise and overdeliver.”
The ally conceded that the Trump 2020 team shouldn’t have said nearly one million people RSVP’d for the event.
A senior advisor for Trump lamented, “This was a bad night for our effort. Hardly a deal-breaker, lots of time to go, many miles ahead. But everything was awful tonight. Crowd size, lack of focus in the speech. Way too many riff stories.”
Similarly, a campaign advisor said of Trump, “He is his own worst enemy.”
However, even Trump didn’t seem sure about how the night would unfold. But, he did seem hopeful.
“We haven’t started campaigning, you know? I have not, essentially, started. I guess you could say it starts on Saturday, right?” Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he expected the event to be “a hell of a night.”
Related: Face Masks Mandatory Amid Rising COVID-19 Cases
Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesperson, said that none of the TikTokers or others received an actual ticket.
“Leftists always fool themselves into thinking they’re being clever,” said Murtaugh. “Registering for a rally only means you’ve RSVP’d with a cell phone number. Every rally is general admission and entry is first-come-first served. But we thank them for their contact information.”
The Trump campaign relies on that data to target advertisements leading up to election day.
As mentioned before, several campaign staff members have reportedly tested positive for coronavirus. Murtaugh said that the staff “immediately implemented” quarantine procedures upon that discovery.
The rally took place despite increasing spikes of COVID-19 infections in the area.
Usually, people are concerned about the best bottled water and similar being available at these events. But, in this case, they had to worry about so much more.
Related: Judge Denies Attempt to Stop Trump’s ‘Super-Spreader’ Tulsa Rally
