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Bloomberg

US President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday hosted a fraction of the expected supporters. Some of the no-shows may have been teenagers who decided to RSVP with no intention of attending.
Over the past few days, people who oppose Trump organised efforts on social-media apps TikTok, Instagram and Twitter to sign up for the rally, sometimes with fake names or burner email accounts.
The message spread among teens, especially fans of Korean pop music, who have pivoted their networks to political causes recently.
Memes on video-sharing app TikTok showed teenagers dancing in front of screenshots of their Trump rally registrations. Many of the posts were set to the tune of the 1993 song Macarena, prompting others to repeat the gesture and causing the meme to go viral.

Just under 6,200 people attended the event, according to a spokesman for the city’s fire department.
It is impossible to know how many of the no-shows at the rally can be attributed to the viral effort.
Trump had boasted of nearly 1 million sign-ups, far beyond the capacity of the Bank of Oklahoma Centre, which has 19,000 seats. The president was planning to address overflow crowds at a stage outside the arena, but there was no need.
His campaign attributed the low turnout to “radical protesters, fuelled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage,” according to a tweet by Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager.
K-pop fans: the unexpected allies of the US protests and Black Lives Matter
Still, online, the opposition declared victory. “My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets,” Steve Schmidt, a political strategist who worked for President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, wrote on Twitter. “You have been rolled by America’s teens.” Other parents’ posts also made similar claims.
Elijah Daniel, a music artist under the name Lil Phag, started asking his followers on TikTok days ago to reserve tickets and spread the word.
On Saturday he followed up on Twitter, asking how many had done so. Dozens responded saying they’d reserved a few tickets, with joke excuses for why they couldn’t go – from walking their plants to feeding their rocks.
“Seeing how this generation has stood up and become so creative in fighting for what they believe in is awesome to see,” Daniel said in an interview, crediting K-pop fans for giving him the idea.

“Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, don’t know what they’re talking about or how our rallies work,” campaign manager Parscale said in a statement on Sunday.
He said the campaign weeds out bogus phone numbers and that they did this with “tens of thousands” at the Tulsa event in calculating possible attendance.
The Trump campaign said registering for the rally didn’t mean guaranteed entry for the event, and no one was issued an actual ticket.
“Leftists always fool themselves into thinking they’re being clever,” said Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman. “Registering for a rally only means you’ve RSVPed with a mobile phone number. Every rally is general admission and entry is first-come-first-served. But we thank them for their contact information.”
Trump calls coronavirus ‘kung flu’ at Tulsa rally
It wasn’t just young people. Mary Jo Laupp, who calls herself a TikTok Grandma, said the rally was “a slap in the face to the Black community”.
She told followers the campaign was offering two free tickets per mobile phone number, and advised people to sign up and then just reply “STOP” to the text messages. Her post was liked 704,500 times and shared 135,000 times.
The Trump campaign relies on data from rally sign-ups to target effective advertisements leading up to election day. On June 14, Parscale tweeted that Tulsa represented the “biggest data haul and rally sign-up of all time by 10x”. At least some of that data is likely to be ineffective.
Additional reporting by Reuters


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Did K-pop fans and TikTok teens sabotage Trump’s Tulsa rally with ‘no-shows’?

A supporter of US President Donald Trump shoots a video with his mobile phone from the sparsely filled upper decks of the arena. Photo: Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts to the crowd as he arrives onstage at his first re-election campaign rally in several months in the midst of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S., June 20, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, early Sunday, June 21, 2020, after stepping off Marine One as he returns from a campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Empty seats, underwhelming crowd as Trump attempts campaign reboot at Tulsa rally

US President Donald Trump arrives on stage to speak at his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo: AP

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

epa08499186 Protester Sincere Terry (R), 18, of Oklahoma City, faces off with police outside the security fence as crowds of protesters and supporters of US President Donald J. Trump interact outside the fencing surrounding the Bank of Oklahoma Center hours before Trump holds a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, 20 June 2020. The campaign rally is the first since the COVID-19 pandemic locked most of the country down in March 2020. EPA-EFE/YOUNG G. KIM

Geoffrey S. Berman, United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, arrives to his office in New York on Saturday, June 20, 2020. The Justice Department moved abruptly Friday night to oust Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan overseeing key prosecutions of President Donald Trump’s allies and an investigation of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But Berman said he was refusing to leave his post and his ongoing investigations would continue. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen)

BTS Army and K-pop fans: the unexpected allies of the US protests and Black Lives Matter

Fans cheer at the K-pop World Festival on October 11, 2019, in Changwon. Photo: AFP

(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 6, 2019, South Korean boy band BTS performs onstage during the KIIS FM's iHeartRadio Jingle Ball at the Forum Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. - K-pop megastars BTS on February 28, 2020 cancelled four Seoul concerts due in April as the number of novel coronavirus cases in South Korea passed 2,000. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)

Fans of K-pop idol boy band BTS enjoy at a pop-up store selling BTS goods in Seoul, South Korea, December 24, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 15: Fans cheer as K-Pop group BTS performs in Central Park, May 15, 2019 in New York City. Fans waited in line for days to see the group perform as part of ABC's 'Good Morning America' summer concert series. Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP == FOR NEWSPAPERS, INTERNET, TELCOS & TELEVISION USE ONLY ==

Fans react as they arrive for a concert of the South Korean K-pop boy band BTS at the Stade-de-France stadium in Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris, on June 7, 2019. (Photo by GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)

Trump allies see a mounting threat: Joe Biden’s rising evangelical support

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden meets clergy members and community activists during a visit to Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Delaware, on June 1. Photo: AFP

FILE - In this Oct. 8, 2019, file photo, people gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington. The Supreme Court’s Monday ruling shielding LGBT people from employment discrimination dealt a blow to religious conservatives — and was penned by a justice they lauded after his nomination by President Donald Trump. Longtime evangelical conservative leader James Dobson said Tuesday, June 16, 2020 in a statement that what he considers an “abhorrent decision” suggests the nation “is in the midst of a spiritual war over its very heart and soul.” (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Demonstrators hold signs during a protest against Georgia's "heartbeat" abortion bill outside of the Georgia State Capitol building in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., on Saturday, May 25, 2019. People gathered to protest the state's recently passed House Bill 481, which would ban abortion after a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat - usually around the sixth week of pregnancy. Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg

A group of religious leaders pray for President Donald Trump during an "Evangelicals for Trump" campaign rally at El Rey Jesus Evangelical church in Kendall, Fla., on Friday, Jan. 3, 2020. (Pedro Portal/Miami Herald/TNS)

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Only 6,200 people attended, despite president boasting of nearly 1 million sign-ups for venue with 19,000 seats
It seemed many were teens who reserved tickets with no plan to attend



Only 6,200 people attended, despite president boasting of nearly 1 million sign-ups for venue with 19,000 seats.


Did K-pop fans and TikTok teens sabotage Trump’s Tulsa rally with ‘no-shows’?

Only 6,200 people attended, despite president boasting of nearly 1 million sign-ups for venue with 19,000 seats It seemed many were teens who reserved tickets with no plan to attend

Only 6,200 people attended, despite president boasting of nearly 1 million sign-ups for venue with 19,000 seats

It seemed many were teens who reserved tickets with no plan to attend