#Trump campaign rejects TikTok teens’ claims that they sabotaged rally

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the BOK Center
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President Trump’s reelection campaign on Sunday rejected reports that TikTok teens and K-Pop fans had affected crowd sizes at the president’s Oklahoma rally by reserving tickets ahead of time.

“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 Brad Parscale said in a statement.

He accused the media of “gleefully” writing about the scam without contacting the campaign, saying the press “behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade.”

Parscale said people registered for the rally at Tulsa’s BOK Center with a cell phone and “we constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally.”

“These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking,” he continued.

The media, he said, had been warning Trump supporters to stay away from the rally because of the coronavirus pandemic and the nationwide protests that have been ongoing since George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25.

“For the media to now celebrate the fear that they helped create is disgusting, but typical. And it makes us wonder why we bother credentialing media for events when they don’t do their full jobs as professionals,” he said in the statement.

When images showed a smaller-than-anticipated crowd at the BOK Center, many teenagers using the social media site TikTok and fans of Korean pop music, took credit for orchestrating the empty seats.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also piled on.

“Actually, you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID,” the progressive lawmaker posted in response to a tweet from Parscale.

Parscale on Sunday also shared photos of police holding back protesters near an entrance to the arena.