Election 2020: Did Ocasio-Cortez Just Admit An Election Interference Using TikTok?

The Trump campaign is dismissing a claim made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) that an anonymous army of American teenagers helped lower the number of people attending the president's campaign rally at Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday. Some are calling this claim an election interference.

Instead of heralding Trump's triumphant return to the stump before a crowd that his campaign said would reach 60,000 people, the president was faced with a half-empty BOK Center with fewer than 6,200 people in attendance. The stadium can seat 19,000 people.

Trump himself is said to be "furious" at campaign manager Brad Parscale for the "underwhelming" crowd size at Tulsa. Democrats and some people in the media gloated over Trump's seemingly humiliating catastrophe.

On the other hand, Republicans are trying to find the answers as to what went wrong. It didn't take long for Ocasio-Cortez to give Parscale the answer he was looking for. Ocasio-Cortez claimed American TikTok users reserved scores of tickets for the Tulsa event online, thereby preventing others from attending.

"Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok,” wrote Ocasio-Cortez to Parscale. She also alleged teens “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."

“Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud,” she tweeted.

In another message, Ocasio-Cortez thanked “KPop allies,” referring to American fans of South Korean pop music. The KPop fans launched campaigns to raise money for Black Lives Matter and are continuing to fight racist hashtags on Twitter.

Also taking credit for humiliating Trump is Mary Jo Laupp, a 51 year-old grandmother from Iowa, who told her TikTok followers to sign up for the Tulsa rally but not attend. Laupp launched a campaign on TikTok to overinflate the campaign’s ticket request numbers. Her campaign caught on and thousands seem to have heeded her call.

“All of those of us that want to see this 19,000 seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty go reserve tickets now and leave him standing alone there on the stage,” she said.

Parscale brushed aside the claims by Ocasio-Cortez and Laupp. He defended the cyber security of the website where people registered to attend the rally. He also said the campaign weeded out tens of thousands of bogus mobile phone numbers, but didn't explain how he knew these numbers were used by the TikTok army.

“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," said Parscale.

Parscale said the real reason for the unusually low turnout was simple: a lot of people viewed the rally online.

Other GOP supporters said Democrats using TikTok is a form of election interference akin to Russia's infamous 2016 election interference, since TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. They claim using TikTok represents unprecedented foreign-based election interference -- something Democrats have known to oppose.

Citing Ocasio-Cortez's admission that TikTok users helped dupe Trump into thinking he would have a huge crowd at Tulsa, Tim Pool tweeted this could be the "largest most impactful election meddling we have seen yet, assuming its true."

Alex Stamos, former chief security officer for Facebook and director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, admits TikTok might be used for disinformation, as can other social media platforms.

"I think it could be, yeah," he told The Verge. "When I think about this, I just threat model it out. Let’s say I work for GRU ... and I’ve been asked, 'Okay, I want to one, drive divisions in American society. And two, I want to support Donald Trump again. How do I do that?'”

Stamos said the best way to do it "is actually kind of a replay of 2016," referring to Russia's interference on behalf of the Trump campaign.

"So if I was the Russians right now, I would put all of my money, all of my effort behind TikTok and Instagram," he added.