Donald Trump claims his Tulsa rally crowd ‘stayed home and watched television’ after just 6,000 turned up for event campaign claimed one MILLION had tickets for
- Trump said his Tulsa crowd was ‘incredible’ despite ‘horrible ominous warnings’ from the media
- He spoke to rows of empty seats after his campaign said 1 million had RSVPd for tickets
- Six campaing staffers had tested positive for coronavirus before the event; two who were there later tested positive
- 7.7 million tuned in to watch the rally on Fox
- Trump accurately said it was a record for Fox in the Saturday night time slot
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
President Trump brushed off the low attendance at his Tulsa rally, saying Tuesday people who showed up were ‘warriors’ and many ‘stayed home and watched television.’
Trump talked up the rally as he left the White House for another trip, this time to Yuma, where he will view border wall construction, and Phoenix, where he will speak to an estimated 3,000 young people at a megachurch.
Trump blamed poor attendance on the media, and pointed to record viewership on television.
Trump said his Tulsa crowd was ‘incredible’ despite ‘horrible ominous warnings’ from the media, as he hailed the televised viewership nationwide on Fox News
‘The Tulsa rally was incredible. Despite all of the horrible ominous warnings that you people put out over a period of two weeks, the crowd was wonderful,’ Trump said. ‘They were warriors. It was a great crowd.’
‘But many of them stayed home and watched television,’ he added. ‘And what happened is Fox, on Saturday night, had the biggest ratings in the history of Fox television.’
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla., where there were an estimated 6,200 in attendance in a 19,000 seat arenda
Empty seats are pictured during a Trump campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla.
Trump drove home the point about the Fox ratings again again during his seven-minute remarks, contrasting the national interest when whatever factors converged to keep people away from Tulsa.
The rally happened amid a rise in coronavirus cases in Tulsa for the first mass indoor gathering since the virus hit. K-pop and TikTok fans also caused confusion by throwing off the campaign with what it estimated were 300,000 fake ticket applications for the 19,000-seat BOK Center.
‘As you probably have heard, Fox had the highest ratings on a Saturday night in the history of Fox. So that’s the ultimate poll I guess,’ Trump said.
‘The ratings on Saturday night for Fox were the highest ratings in the history of Fox News which is I guess a long history,’ he added.
‘We actually had a nice crowd, despite all of the warnings and everything else hat other networks were trying to do. Despite the fact that we had some pretty bad people waiting there.’
‘They shouldn’t have been. Maybe some of the people I just talked about,’ Trump said – referencing his earlier comments about ‘hooligans’ who tried to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson just north of the White House.
‘We had a nice crowd. Online I heard the record was unbelievable,’ he said.
Fox indeed reported that the rally set a record for the 8-10pm Saturday night time slot. The estimated 7.7 million viewers were based on early Nielsen data.
On Saturday night, Looking at row after row of empty blue seats, Trump was stunned and vented his frustration to his aides, The New York Times reported. The empty seats came as a poll average shows Trump trailing rival Joe Biden by about 10 percentage points.