June 22, 2020

The Kerfuffle Over Trump’s Tulsa Rally

After touting a million ticket requests, just 6,200 showed up. Why?

President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally since the pandemic began, and roughly 6,200 people attended Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That’s the silver lining. The embarrassment for the president is that his reelection campaign set expectations far higher than a few thousand, touting more than a million ticket requests in the days leading up to the rally. So it’s little wonder that falling so far short was newsworthy, and it’s certainly not surprising that Leftmedia coverage was full of schadenfreude. Ever the showman, Trump loves to brag and bicker about his crowd sizes. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The scuttlebutt is that leftists organized via social media to “claim” a large portion of those tickets, as well as show up to protest and obstruct entrance to the event. It’s possible that these efforts suppressed turnout, given that a “ticket” merely allowed folks to stand in line for hours to enter the 19,000-seat stadium. But a couple hundred protesters at a Trump rally isn’t anything new, and surely leftists didn’t snatch up so many tickets that only 6,200 people in bright red Tulsa were motivated to show 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,” insisted Brad Parscale, the campaign manager who organized the rally and pushed the big numbers. “Registering for a rally means you’ve RSVP’d with a cellphone 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.”

The Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe, who is no fan of Trump, likewise argues it was “absolutely not” this leftist effort on social media but the coronavirus pandemic. “You could be Trump’s most emphatic supporter,” she says, “but an indoor rally with no social distancing, full of people refusing to wear masks is a recipe for contracting the coronavirus. It’s no wonder that turnout paled in comparison to his previous rallies.”

Regardless, the fact that Trump’s campaign so grossly overestimated the size of this rally should be reason for some soul-searching and perhaps a few staff changes.

On the other hand, at least Trump held a rally. Joe Biden’s still running his campaign from his basement, which is right where Democrats want him. Their strategy is to prolong the economic tribulation of the pandemic by blaring headlines about every uptick in COVID cases and deaths, all while fomenting racial division by somehow blaming Republicans for the death and mayhem in cities run by Democrats for decades. The more they make the election a referendum on Trump’s personality and supposed failures, and the less they make it about Biden, the better they think their chances are. In that respect, Trump may indeed be his own greatest opponent.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.