Tulsa Rally A Bust As Low Turnout Has Critics Mocking Trump

The BOK Center didn’t fill up as Donald Trump had hoped after Oklahoma health officials announced the highest number of infections recorded in a single day for the state, . Holding his rally in Tulsa, despite the threat to health and welfare due to COVID-19, his supporters didn't flock to the event as expected.

President Trump is now being mocked by many for the low turnout at the rally, Saturday night (June 20). The POTUS had said that attendance was expected to be so overwhelming that they would need room for overflow, but that didn’t happen.

The Hill reports that there were many empty spaces on the floor and upper parts of the arena and that the Trump campaign made a statement saying they blamed the low numbers on protesters and the media.

“President Trump is rallying in Tulsa with thousands of energetic supporters, a stark contrast to the sleepy campaign being run by Joe Biden from his basement in Delaware,” the communications director for the Trump campaign Tim Murtaugh in a statement said. “Sadly, protestors interfered with supporters, even blocking access to the metal detectors, which prevented people from entering the rally.”

Trump himself blamed “some very bad people outside” for the low attendance and made the unfounded claim that protesters were blocking attendees from getting in as he thanked those who did attend the event in Tulsa.

“We begin! We begin! We begin our campaign," Trump said, with the sound of applause. "I stand before you today to declare the Silent Majority is stronger than ever before!” he went on.

Markedly absent from his speech was any mention of the Juneteenth catastrophe nor the Black Lives Matter movement that has swept the country in recent weeks over the murder of an unarmed black man named George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police.

He took time for a swipe at his political rival Joe Biden. “Virtually every policy that has hurt Black Americans for half a century, Joe Biden has supported or enacted,” Trump said. “I have done more for the Black community in four years then Joe Biden has done in 47 years.”

Many of the rally-goers were not following social distancing guidelines even though there was plenty of room to do so. According to NBC News, there was almost no one on the front lines of the rally that bothered to wear a face mask for protection, and the same could be said for the other attendees throughout the arena.

There were people at the entrance who were checking temperatures and handing out masks, but they required no one to wear them.