K-Pop fans and teens on the popular social app TikTok have claimed responsibility for the less-than-stellar turn out at President Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa on Saturday night.
As CNN reported, thousands of blue arena seats remained noticeably empty during the event, despite Trump previously boasting that a million people had eagerly RSVP’d to attend.
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Last week, Trump tweeted to brag about the prospective showing for his upcoming rally in Oklahoma.
This was after the Trump campaign asked people on Twitter on June 11 to register for their free tickets to the event, a notice which was apparently picked up by K-Pop fans and TikTok users alike who then decided to organize a stunt to troll the president.
Thousands of people within both communities registered for the rally, RSVP’d seats, and then simply did not show up.
“It spread mostly through Alt TikTok – we kept it on the quiet side where people do pranks and a lot of activism,” YouTuber Elijah Daniel told the New York Times of the prank.
“K-pop Twitter and Alt TikTok have a good alliance where they spread information amongst each other very quickly. They all know the algorithms and how they can boost videos to get where they want.”
The movement appears to have been launched by Mary Jo Laupp, a teacher from Iowa who had worked on Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.
Last week, the 51-year-old posted a video to TikTok where she encouraged people to sign up for tickets and then not show up to the rally.
“All of those of us that want to see this 19,000 seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty go reserve tickets now and leave him standing alone there on the stage,” she said in the clip which has since blown up, amassing over 2 million views and more than 700,000 likes.
As images began appearing on social media of Trump’s minimal rally showing, many users spoke out to celebrate the success of their massive troll.
Mary Jo herself shared another video to thank everyone for reserving a spot in the 19,000-seat auditorium.
“What did you guys do?” she implored in the clip posted on Saturday night. “Like, seriously? Are you kidding me right now?”
On Saturday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale who blamed “radical protesters” for the low turnout.
“Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign [with] fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID,” she wrote , adding, “Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud.”
However, the Trump campaign is still apparently refusing to accept they were duped by teenagers online.
An unnamed campaign official told CNN , “We had legitimate 300k signups of Republicans who voted in the last four elections. Those are not [TikTok] kids. It was fear of violent protests. This is obvious with the lack of families and children at the rally.”
“We normally have thousands of families.”
h/t: CNN
