While the far left and their cohorts in the media were busy celebrating the fact that there were some empty seats in the BOK Center arena in Tulsa Saturday night, the instigator of an organized effort to sabotage attendance may surprise you. Those empty seats were meant as a political statement against President Trump, an action taken to embarrass him and his re-election campaign.
People like socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are giddy with glee over the fact that so many young adults, teens, and political activists like those ex-Republican grifters who are leading the anti-Trump PAC, The Lincoln Project, pulled off a prank with the help of social media and the popularity of K-pop. The idea came from a grown woman, Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother, living in Fort Dodge, Iowa. The former campaign worker on the Pete Buttigieg campaign used her Tik Tok account to put out the call – hey, kids, sign up for free tickets to the Trump rally in Tulsa. Laupp uses the excuse of her indignation that the President of the United States dares to come to Tulsa on Juneteenth. The date was changed but the plan was already underway by then.
The campaign offered two tickets for each cell phone request. By texting the campaign for tickets, the campaign gets the person’s contact information. So, Laupp tells the kids that they can stop Trump campaign texts that will come after their ticket requests are filled. Her hope was for the arena to be empty and the president standing on the stage all alone. Ms. Laupp has an active imagination, apparently.
@maryjo.laupp Did you know you can make sure there are empty seats at Trump’s rally? BLM.
So, by now we know that the plan seems to have had some success. There were empty seats in the arena and that is unusual for a Trump rally. The empty seats may also be attributed to the fact that some Trump supporters may have changed their minds about attending, due to the coronavirus or other personal reasons. The arena holds 19,000 people.
In an interview with CNN last week, Laupp said her Tik Tok account, at the time she had 1,000 followers, blew up after she put the political call out. Normally Tik Tok is used for silly dance videos and pranks, not political messages. Lo and behold, Ms. Laupp works at a high school. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that she turned a silly app into political activism. I wonder if she knows she likely opened up the young people and others who participated in the sabotage to the Communist Chinese acquiring their contact information. Anything to own Trump, amirite?
Her idea prompted multiple other TikTok users to post similar videos calling on their followers to do the same — visit the website, register for the event, fail to show up.
One video, with more than a quarter of a million views, called on fans of South Korean pop music in particular to join the trolling campaign. Fans of the music, which is known as K-pop, are a force on social media — they posted over six billion tweets last year alone. And they have a history of taking action for social justice causes.
Earlier this month K-pop fans rallied around the Black Lives Matter movement, drowning out “White Lives Matter” and other anti-black hashtags. It is not clear if K-Pop fans have registered for the Trump Tulsa rally in big numbers.
The K-pop fans are being credited for the large number of young people participating, especially by the likes of AOC. The Tik Toks were often set to the Macarena with the kids doing the dance and showing ticket confirmations.
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
Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. ☺️ https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020
Trump supporters fired back to some of the culprits.
What’s humiliating is you are clueless how the process works. No wonder a McCain lost – taking advice from idiots like this. https://t.co/dpHC8n78MC
— Chris Barron 🇺🇸 (@ChrisRBarron) June 21, 2020
Even a CNN reporter had to admit it was still a pretty darn big crowd.
It is by no means a small crowd here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where President Donald Trump is rallying supporters tonight. But the campaign had hyped a packed arena with overflow space that would span blocks outdoors— it is not, by any means, that. pic.twitter.com/ZbgFBciPry
— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) June 20, 2020
The Trump campaign argues against the left’s success.
“Leftists always fool themselves into thinking they’re being clever. Registering for a rally only means you’ve RSVPed with a cell phone number,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh in a statement to Reuters. “But we thank them for their contact information.”
We know that Trump prides himself on his ability to draw very large crowds to his campaign rallies. In contrast to Joe Biden, there is no contest on that claim. Biden has a real enthusiasm deficit, despite his favorable polling at this point in the campaign. Trump’s supporters have remained loyal and enthusiastic about his re-election. Lower attendance than expected is given as the reason for an outdoor rally for the overflow crowd being canceled. Both Trump and Vice-President Pence were to have spoken to them. Parscale blamed agitators, anti-Trumpers disagreed.
No this is why https://t.co/fFVCigssZ4
— Brandon Levesque (@brandonlevek) June 21, 2020
Perhaps it was the “teens of America” who enjoyed participating in some easy political action against Trump that caused those empty seats in the arena. There is no way to know. What we do know, though, is that this is a bare-knuckles presidential campaign and there is good reason to believe that Trump is up to the fight. The media, bitter NeverTrumpers and the left are aligning to deliver the election to Joe Biden. That includes using teenagers who may not even be old enough to be registered to vote.
This is what happened tonight. I’m dead serious when I say this. The teens of America have struck a savage blow against @realDonaldTrump. All across America teens ordered tickets to this event. The fools on the campaign bragged about a million tickets. lol. @ProjectLincoln.
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2020
Today Brad Parscale released a statement addressing the gleeful reporters who never even bothered to ask the campaign for comments on the theory that online trolls hacked the event to affect attendance. He blames the over-the-top media coverage before the rally and safety concerns of families due to the possibility of violent protesters.
“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. Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-Pop fans – without contacting the campaign for comment – behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade. Registering for a rally means you’ve RSVPed with a cell phone number and we constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally, in calculating our possible attendee pool. These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking. What makes this lame attempt at hacking our events even more foolish is the fact that every rally is general admission – entry is on a first-come-first-served basis and prior registration is not required. The fact is that a week’s worth of the fake news media warning people away from the rally because of COVID and protestors, coupled with recent images of American cities on fire, had a real impact on people bringing their families and children to the rally. MSNBC was among outlets reporting that protesters even blocked entrances to the rally at times. 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.”
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