Did Trump Get Pranked in Tulsa? TikTok Users Had Campaign Thinking A Million Would Show To Rally

After initial reports of an overwhelming turnout for President Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, the actual attendance figures have been considerably low. At the Bank of Oklahoma Center, which can hold over 19,000, Trump's much-hyped and controversial rally drew just 6,000.

While the Trump campaign has been quick to point blame at left-wing protestors, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York praised the efforts teens on TikTok for their efforts to prank the rally.

“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,” the Democratic congresswoman said in a tweet on Saturday. “Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud.”

According to a New York Times report, the prank spread amongst teenage users on the video-sharing app, TikTok, and K-pop fans after the Trump campaign urged supporters to register for free tickets. Smelling an opportunity to pull one over on Trump, these groups reportedly registered en masse, giving the false appearance of staggering demand.

“It spread mostly through Alt TikTok — we kept it on the quiet side where people do pranks and a lot of activism,” YouTuber Elijah Daniel, 26, explained. “K-pop Twitter and Alt TikTok have a good alliance where they spread information amongst each other very quickly. They all know the algorithms and how they can boost videos to get where they want.”

One Twitter user pointed to a video compilation of officials boasting of the supposed million people signing up for the rally as proof that the prank succeeding in duping the Trump campaign.

In the wake of a potentially embarrassing flub, Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale has attempted to downplay the issue, claiming that “phony” registrations were not counted towards early estimates.

“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,” Parscale said. “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.”