Many of those who applied for tickets may have been trolling the president - in a stunt organized primarily through the social media platform TikTok.
Trump last week tweeted that "almost a million people asked for tickets to the Saturday night rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma!" and a local official said they expected 100,000 people to show up near the arena. But on Saturday, registered participants did not fill the arena at the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa, which admitted rallygoers on a first-come, first-served basis, and the Trump team abandoned the President's plans to speak. to an "overflow" area outside the arena.
A coordinated effort was underway on TikTok in the days leading up to Trump's rally on Saturday, encouraging people to register online for the free event and not show up. TikTok is normally seen as a platform for teenage dancing and not necessarily political action.
A Trump campaign official has rejected the suggestion that such messages played a role in participation, telling CNN: "We have had 300,000 legitimate registrations from Republicans who voted in the last four elections. These are not [TikTok] kids. It was the fear of violent demonstrations. This is evident with the lack of families and children at the rally. We normally have thousands of families. "
While the TikTok effort appears to have massively involved teens and other youth, Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother living in Fort Dodge, Iowa, appears to have played a central role in encouraging people to visit the site Trump's web, sign up to attend the event - and don't attend.
"All of us who want to see this barely full or completely empty 19,000-seat auditorium are going to book tickets now and leave it standing there on the stage," Laupp told his nearly 1,000 subscribers on TikTok.
And then, alongside the choreographed dances, the comic challenges and the pranks of the schoolyard, the grandmother's guest became a challenge in itself. Inspired users have started posting videos showing that they are also registered for the event. Similar posts on Instagram and Twitter have garnered thousands of likes.
A video, with more than a quarter of a million views, notably called on South Korean pop music fans to join the trolling campaign. Fans of music, known as K-pop, are a force on social media - they posted more than 6 billion tweets last year alone. And they are used to acting for causes of social justice.
Earlier this month, K-pop fans gathered around the Black Lives Matter movement, drowning "White Lives Matter" and other anti-Black hashtags.
Laupp, who said she worked at former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg's campaign in Iowa last fall, told CNN that she made the initial call when she was upset that the rally was originally scheduled to take place on June 19, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery. in the USA.
The Trump campaign rejected the effort last week. Erin Perrine, deputy director of communications for the Trump campaign, told CNN on Tuesday: "Leftists do it all the time. They think if they sign up for tickets that will leave seats empty. Not at all "There are still far more ticket requests than seats available at a meeting. All they do is give us access to their contact details."
Saturday evening, while the images showed empty sections of the BOK Center, Laupp and the young people of TikTok celebrated. "Generation Z is unstoppable," wrote a youth on TikTok.
Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted to Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, "You've just been rocked by teenagers on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign with fake ticket reservations and made you believe that a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic to be enough to pack an arena during COVID. "
Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who ran John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008, tweeted, "Teenagers in America have dealt a big blow to @realDonaldTrump. Teenagers across the country have ordered tickets for this event. Campaign fools boasted a million tickets. Lol. "
TikTok, owned by a Chinese company, has already attracted the attention of American lawmakers.
Last year, the Sens. Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton urged the American intelligence community to assess the national security risks to TikTok and other Chinese-owned platforms.