On Saturday night, a dismal turnout at Trump’s first rally of the campaign season since February showed that Trump’s numbers are quickly sinking. Empty seats and a lack of an overflow crowd, which caused a speech to be cancelled, left Trump embarrassed and looking quite pitiful on the stage.
Former political campaign strategist Steve Schmidt offered an explanation for why there was no one to fill up those seats.
My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by America’s teens. @realDonaldTrump you have been failed by your team. You have been deserted by your faithful. No one likes to root for the losing team. @ProjectLincoln https://t.co/VM5elZ57Qp
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2020
The Coalition of the Decent is attacking and winning. Trump has been stripped bare. He stands naked and exposed for all to see. He is a failure. He is going down.
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 20, 2020
The Trump campaign, including campaign manager Brad Parscale, claimed that nearly a million people had requested tickets to the event, but the numbers weren’t even big enough to fill a 19,000-seat arena. To be clear, those requesting the tickets aren’t solely responsible for the empty seats. An overflow crowd would have filled them. However, there wasn’t one, even though Trump had touted big numbers ahead of the rally.
Tulsa World reported that Trump had said
‘[There will be] over 900,000 people that won’t be able to go, but hopefully they’ll be watching.’
‘But it’s amazing. No one’s ever heard of numbers like this. We’re going to have a great time. We’re going to talk about our nation. We’re going to talk about where we’re going, where we’ve come from.’
Almost One Million people request tickets for the Saturday Night Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2020
However, it isn’t just teens who snapped up the tickets. A number of people on Twitter said they had done the same, which inflated the expected numbers. Parscale tweeted that more than 800,000 tickets had been requested, and then had to tweet again to offer excuses as to why attendance was so low.
Just passed 800,000 tickets. Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x.
Saturday is going to be amazing! https://t.co/u2tQ812odW
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 14, 2020
Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally.
They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering.
Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!https://t.co/eM2nohMEy6
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 20, 2020
Just like most of the things a Trump insider says, that proved to be untrue. Photos posted by those at the rally show that no one was blocking the entrance.
Brad says thugs are blocking the entrances….! Huh, pictures don't lie…🤔
… pic.twitter.com/ZIpvMN3aup— 🕊OccupyPeace👊🏾😷🦄 ✌🏼💔in isolation (@stonergrandma) June 21, 2020
Featured image screenshot via rall
