WHITE HOUSE
Trump campaign blames protesters for
disappointing turnout at Tulsa rally
Slipping in polls, the president hoped to reset his
campaign with first rally since coronavirus outbreak began.
By EUGENE DANIELS
06/20/2020
02:33 PM EDT
Updated:
06/20/2020 10:41 PM EDT
TULSA -
President Donald Trump is hoping to outrun the coronavirus pandemic as he bids
for reelection in 2020. His return to the campaign trail Saturday night in
Tulsa, Okla. demonstrates just how difficult that's going to be.
Trump
skipped a planned appearance outside of the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., which
Campaign Spokesman Tim Murtaugh blamed on "radical protestors, coupled
with a relentless onslaught from the media," who "attempted to
frighten off the President’s supporters" with their warnings about the
pandemic risk.
Reporters
on the scene, however, denied seeing large numbers of people turned away from
the overflow stage. Inside the 20,000-person BOK Center, meanwhile, whole
sections of the arena remained empty. Health experts had issued increasingly
stark warnings in the lead up to the rally, while a June 15 editorial in the
Tulsa World argued it was "the wrong time" to hold a campaign gathering.
The
disappointing turnout is a blow to Trump and his Republican allies, who hoped
the rally would kick start a new phase of the campaign after a politically
brutal spring. National and swing-state polling show Trump trailing presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, amid mounting criticism of the
president's handling of both the coronavirus and the protests against police
brutality sweeping the nation.
Trump had
bragged earlier in the week that the campaign had received nearly a million
ticket requests for the rally — his first after a three-month hiatus due to the
pandemic, which has killed more than 121,000 Americans.
In the days
leading up to the rally, Trump campaign officials tried to determine how many
of the one million sign ups were fakes — a figure they ultimately determined
was in the hundreds of thousands. But they said they still expected a massive
crowd.
Some
Republicans involved in the re-election effort said they feared an internal
backlash over the snafu. The President has long been known to take his crowd
sizes seriously and had viewed his Tulsa rally as a turning point.
"You
are warriors!" the president told the crowd as he began his remarks.
"We had some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things."
The
thousands of people in the arena, many of whom lined up days earlier, erupted
in what felt like a primal scream of pent of excitement and emotion, months in
the making. T-shirts emblazoned with “Trump 2020,” “MAGA,” and “defend the
police” dotted the crowd, but few wore the face masks provided by the campaign.
The
president then launched into a 90-minute speech that hit familiar targets —
"Sleepy Joe" Biden, the media, the “radical left,” and the
Washington, D.C. swamp — while labeling his supporters as insurgents, ready to
take on the establishment and every group of people who oppose his
administration.
In a return
to controversial rhetoric he used in March, Trump repeatedly referred to the
coronavirus as the “China Virus” and “Kung-Flu," the latter a term one of
his own advisers acknowledged was offensive. And he downplayed the impact of
the virus, saying, “I have done a phenomenal job with it. I saved hundreds of
thousands of lives.”
The
president also said he told his team to slow down testing for Covid-19, the
disease caused by the novel coronavirus, blaming the increase in tests for the
recent rise in infections across the south and west of the country, including
in Oklahoma.
The entire
scene was soaked in controversy. The nation’s largest indoor gathering in three
months was a rejection of the Trump administration’s own warnings about public
events. Six members of the campaign's advance team who worked to set up the
rally tested positive for Covid-19 and have been forced to quarantine.
And the
rally comes amid nationwide protests — including in Tulsa — over systemic
racism. The event was initially announced to take place on Juneteenth, a
celebration of the end of slavery in the United States, before the campaign
moved the date last week after mounting criticism. The rally took place about a
mile from the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre – one of the worst racist attacks
in American history in which white mobs burned the black community of
Greenwood, known as “Black Wall Street” on June, 1, 1921.
Marq Lewis,
a Tulsa resident and community activist with We the People Oklahoma called the
visit purposefully inflammatory. “We're already tender and emotions are high.
People feel like they can't really celebrate their Juneteenth the way they want
to celebrate it without the backdrop and the shadow of Donald Trump.”
Trump, for
his part, decried the actions of protesters, particularly those that have torn
down or vandalized Confederate statues and other memorials to figures like
Christopher Columbus and Thomas Jefferson. "The unhinged left wing mob is
trying to vandalize our history, desecrating our monuments, our beautiful
monuments, tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who
does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control," he
lamented.
"That's
why we're here, actually. This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion
violates everything we hold dear as Americans. They want to demolish our
heritage so they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place. They want
to defund and dissolve our police departments. Think of that."
The
president arrived in Oklahoma at the same time that the state has seen a spike
in Covid-19 infections, with 352 new cases in the state on Friday alone — the
second-largest one-day jump during the crisis. And the indoor mass gathering
went against the recommendations of health experts in Oklahoma and across the
nation.
While
trying to sidestep the politics of the rally, local health officials continued
to remind Oklahoma residents and other rallygoers of the dangers of large-scale
events during the Covid-19 pandemic. “As outlined by the CDC, individuals
looking to attend any large-scale gathering will face an increased risk of
becoming infected with Covid-19 and becoming a transmitter of this novel
virus,” a spokesman for the Oklahoma State Department of Health said in a
statement ahead of the event.
“I think
it’s an honor for Tulsa to have a sitting president want to come and visit our
community, but not during a pandemic,” Tulsa Health Department Director Brad
Dart told the Tulsa World earlier in the week. “I’m concerned about our ability
to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned
about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well.”
The Trump
campaign sent mixed messages about whether the rally would be safe for
attendees. The president told reporters this week that “everybody is going to
be safe” while the registration for tickets came with an acknowledgment that
“any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19,” and
couldn’t hold the campaign or the center liable.
Though the
campaign handed out masks and hand sanitizer, the vast majority of attendees
opted not to wear face coverings, bucking the advice of healthcare experts as
they chanted, booed and laughed.
Alex
Isenstadt contributed to this report.
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