Trump campaign dismisses report that TikTok users, K-Pop fans sabotaged rally attendance
By Rebecca Klar - 06/21/20 01:35 PM EDT
President Trump’s reelection campaign dismissed a report that TikTok users and K-Pop fans sabotaged attendance at Trump’s Saturday night rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma by registering for free tickets and not showing up.
“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,†Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement Sunday.
“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,†he added.
K-Pop fan accounts and TikTok users started sharing information about a tweet from the Trump campaign account asking supporters to register for free tickets, encouraging users to register for the rally and then not show, The New York Times reported Sunday.
excerpt:
But Parscale claims the social media effort did not impact the crowd size.
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“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,†he said. “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.â€
Parscale instead blamed a “week’s worth of fake news media†about the COVID-19 pandemic and protests for impacting the crowd size.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/503799-trump-campaign-dismisses-reports-that-tiktok-users-k-pop-fans-sabotaged
