On June 20th, 2020 then-President Trump was getting worried about his reelection prospects. Lagging in the polls behind Democratic presidential nominee and then-former Vice President Joe Biden, and his signature MAGA rallies on hold for months due to the nationwide Coronavirus pandemic, Trump was dying to get back on the campaign trail. For whatever reason Trump and his campaign chose Tulsa – maybe due to the relative lack of local Coronavirus restrictions, that a deep Red State would guarantee a large crowd as opposed to a swing state, deliberate trolling because it was the site of one of the deadliest racial pogroms in American history, or some combination thereof – and set it for June 19th, before pushing it back a day as to respect Juneteenth.
The Trump campaign and their fans were elated that he was hitting the road again. Better yet, they got over a million requests for tickets, so much so they made plans for a double indoor-outdoor rally at the Bank of Oklahoma arena in Tulsa. The MAGA kids were SO excited.
Then the big night came and…
Update: outdoor area has completely emptied out. pic.twitter.com/XS8M0IJRFc
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 20, 2020
Paging Sean Spicer for a crowd estimate in Tulsa
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) June 20, 2020
This is President Trump’s Fyre Fest. pic.twitter.com/USYQ6e94gM
— David Cicilline (@davidcicilline) June 20, 2020
The next day, the excuses…
Then the TikTok plot was revealed…
So that was a lot of fun, and with out a doubt the most hilarious fuckups of the Trump reelection campaign up until that point at least. It began Trump’s quest for revenge against TikTok for their users’ trolling (TikTok had already had a legitimate bullseye on their back from the US Treasury department at that point), and to our knowledge Trump never attempted to have a rally anywhere close to that size again. It took a few months for him to really get back on the campaign trail, but most events were held at airports, with crowd sizes in the low thousands.
The Wikipedia article on the Tulsa Rally provides probably the most succinct description of what was accomplished for the Trump Campaign: “The number of daily COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma tripled in the 30 days that followed the rally, while Republican politician Herman Cain died from complications of COVID-19 after attending it.“
ILLEGAL ? • a year ago
HAHAHA IF THE DEMORATS CAN BURN THEIR CITIES DOWN DONALD TRUMP CAN HAVE A RALLY
Sat, 6/13/2020 1:47 AM on ‘Trump campaign manager says 300,000 tickets registered for upcoming rally’