President Donald Trump claimed Friday that 106,000 people have requested tickets to see his re-election launch next week at a 20,000-seat Florida arena.
Hours later his campaign announced that a carnival atmosphere will greet the overflow crowd outside the Amway Center in Orlando, complete with food and entertainment.
The ’45 Fest’ will start 10 hours before the 8:00 p.m. rally, and will include food trucks, jumbo TV screens for the overflow crowd and live music.
Should 106,000 Trump fans show up, the mass of MAGA humanity would be nearly twice the size of an average day’s attendance at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, a half-hour’s drive away.
The campaign’s hired band is a Houston-based quintet called ‘The Guzzlers.’ A member who gave his name as ‘Dancin’ Dave’ told DailyMail.com that they got the job through a Texas-based booking agent.
‘I don’t really know how we got picked,’ he said in a brief phone interview as he set up for a gig in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The event is being held at Orlando’s Amway Center, which has a max capacity of 20,000 people for sporting events
‘We’re just a bunch of old rockers with day jobs. We’re recovering musicians, if you want to know,’ he said.
The group’s website pictures an aging party band whose members go by names like ‘Wildeman’ and ‘Johnny Gator.’
‘We believe playing keeps us young,’ it says. ‘Together, we have more than 200 years of experience.’
Dancin’ Dave said The Guzzlers are known for charity events that benefit the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, the institution that Eric Trump has raised millions for with golf tournaments.
‘We’ve been doing that work for quite awhile,’ he said.
The president’s son said in a text message that it was a coincidence and he didn’t recommend them.
President Trump will speak Tuesday alongside first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and second lady Karen Pence.
‘The President’s historic announcement of his second term presidential run has already generated tens of thousands of ticketing requests and will draw an enormous crowd,” said Michael Glassner, the campaign’s chief operating officer.
‘We’ll have delicious food, live music, big screens, and a great time for all of our guests,’ he said.
As of Wednesday the president was claiming that his campaign had 74,000 requests for tickets.
His campaign claimed last year that 100,000 people requested tickets for for a Houston rally. While that number was never confirmed, supporters of the president camped outside the arena overnight. The line stretched more than five city blocks.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has struggled to draw large crowds. His first campaign stop this week in Iowa drew fewer than 100 people to the town of ottumwa.
Biden’s campaign kickoff event, an outdoor speech in Philadelphia, drew an estimated 6,000 people.
California Sen. Kamala Harris’s campaign launch rally in Oakland was seen in person by about 20,000 people. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders held several rallies that size in 2016.
Sanders’ campaign says that at his opening event in Brooklyn, New York this year he spoke to an audience of 13,000.
Trump has been foreshadowing his re-election camapign for more than a year by teasing the possibility of a switch away from the Reagan-era ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan that catapulted him to the White House.
Tuesday in West Des Moines, Iowa, he polled a Republican fundraiser audience to see if they would prefer replacing it with ‘Keep America Great.’
The novel approach generated far more applause, as it did a week earlier at a central Pennsylvania rally.