Continuing in their wildly coordinated political organizing, K-pop fans (along with TikTok users) apparently sabotaged President Trump’s rally tonight at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale originally projected that the rally would fill the 19,000-seat stadium, with Trump scheduled to make an address to the overflow crowd outside. Instead, the outdoor address was canceled, and the stadium was more than half empty. Political commentators deduced that K-pop fans as well as TikTok users had mobilized to reserve tickets to the rally, skewing the Trump campaign’s projections and securing the empty seats.
“That arena is not full. The outside: empty. They couldn’t even get 19,000 people there and they had bragged that there was going to be a million,” Joy Reid reported on MSNBC. “[Parscale] was played by young people and K-pop fans who ordered tickets with no intention of going.” Parscale claimed on Twitter that “radical protestors” had “blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to Parscale, writing, “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,” and added, “KPop allies, we see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice too.” This is not out of character for K-pop stans, who just this month have raised $1 million for Black Lives Matter, flooded racist hashtags on Twitter, and shut down the Dallas Police Department’s eyewitness app.
