This is fake news for a number of reasons, the least of which can be explained by the simple fact of the coronavirus. But it is also easily debunked by the sheer irrelevance of Trump’s ticket “sales,” which don’t actually cost any money.

Just consider, the Trump campaign booked an arena that only held 19,000 people at the most despite allowing over a million downloads of tickets. Why? Not because they’re banking on overflow space, but because data is power in a campaign. They’d rather get a million phone numbers added to their distribution lists with a few trolls included than actually modify their rally space to their audience. The only practical winner here is Trump’s data operation, even if his ego is sorely bruised. After all, why do you think politicians want you to sign digital birthday cards and petitions? Enormous email lists can be sold for to other campaigns for hundreds of thousands of dollars, meaning you can make campaign cash on them both through directly contacting voters and then by selling them multiple times over. With rally registration like his, it’s no wonder that Trump has the largest contact list of any other politician.

No, TikTok absolutely did not tank Trump’s rally. But I’m sure the Chinese government that backs the brand is happy for you to believe so.