New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) engaged in a Twitter celebration on Saturday night following reports that opponents of President Trump purchased large numbers of tickets to sell out seats to his rally in Oklahoma.
In a Twitter post to her 7.3 million followers, AOC appeared to find glee in reports that young anti-Trump activists allegedly reserved tickets online for the Tulsa event, and then failed to attend, preventing genuine Trump supporters from showing up to listen to the president.
In response to a Tweet by Trump 2020 campaign chief Brad Parscale who voiced concern that the actions of “radical protestors” had preventing Trump supporters from attending the event at the BOK Center, AOC exclaimed that, “Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok.”
Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who 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
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020
Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. ☺️ https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T
AOC proclaimed that teenage activists, “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.”
Appearing to subtly invite foreign influence into American politics, AOC also praised “Kpop allies” - a term that broadly refers to fans of Korean pop music - both American and overseas - who have in recent weeks proclaimed their solidarity with Black Lives Matter protestors through social media.
KPop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too 😌
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020
Photos and videos from Trump’s June 20 rally show that the upper tier of the BOK Center was largely empty, and remained so throughout President Trump’s speech. There were also many empty spaces in the lower areas. Mr Trump’s campaign had previously said that the campaign had received nearly a million ticket requests, suggesting a likely large-scale turnout of supporters.
Trump desperately wanted a riot in Tulsa. He got a laugh riot instead.#EveryonesLaughingAtYouDonald pic.twitter.com/4GQNoz9Q9W
— audiomagnate🔊 (@audiomagnate) June 21, 2020
As Fox News makes clear, “it wasn’t clear if Ocasio-Cortez knew of the alleged scheme in advance, or if she was reacting to media reports.”
According to reports, “TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump’s campaign rally as a prank.”
One activist, Elijah Daniel, 26, explained today to The New York Times that, “it spread mostly through Alt TikTok - we kept it on the quiet side where people do pranks and a lot of activism. K-pop Twitter and Alt TikTok have a good alliance where they spread information amongst each other very quickly. They all know the algorithms and how they can boost videos to get where they want.”
According to that same report, many of the activists who take part in the effort to sabotage what was widely billed as President Trump’s “comeback” rally deleted their posts after 24 to 48 hours in order to hide their plan from being uncovered.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh has since blamed the low turnout to the Oklahoma rally on “radical protestors, coupled with a relentless onslaught from the media” who “attempted to frighten off the President’s supporters” by warning about the risk of attending such as large gathering due to the coronavirus.
