Trump stokes culture wars, but low turnout mars Tulsa campaign rally

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump returned to one of his favorite pastimes on Saturday night: Headlining a big, brash Trump campaign rally.

After three months without a major campaign event, Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma was billed as a sort of reunion for the president and his most ardent supporters, some of whom had been waiting in line for days to be sure they got a seat.

For Trump and his inner circle, the promise of a raucous, jam-packed MAGA rally in a deep red state was seen as an opportunity for the president to put the calamitous spring of 2020 behind him, to fire up his army of loyal supporters, and to give his flagging reelection campaign a shot in the arm.

Talking up the rally last week, Trump said nearly a million people had requested tickets to attend. “We have a 22,000-seat arena, but I think we’re going to also take the convention hall next door, and that’s going to hold 40,000 … We expect to have a record-setting crowd. We’ve never had an empty seat, and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma.”

But they did have empty seats. Approximately 13,000 of them, according to the Tulsa Fire Marshal, who counted slightly less than 6,200 attendees at the 19,000-seat Bank of Oklahoma Arena on Saturday night. 

Shortly before Trump took the stage, construction crews dismantled the outdoor “overflow” space near the arena, after it was clear there wouldn’t be enough people to fill it.

Trump and his campaign were quick to blame protesters outside the arena for scaring away prospective rally goers. They also blamed the media for reporting extensively on the risks associated with attending a massive indoor gathering during the coronavirus pandemic, especially one where neither masks nor social distancing are required.

Early Sunday morning, it was still unclear precisely what had accounted for the massive discrepancy between the number of ticket requests the Trump campaign said it received, and the number of people who showed up in Tulsa.

But several reports suggest that a loose network of young people on TikTok may have reserved thousands of tickets they never planned to use, and encouraged their friends to do the same. If this is what actually happened, it would amount to a jaw-dropping 21st century political prank. 

The theme of dangerous protesters who pose a threat to law-abiding Americans ran throughout Trump’s nearly two hours on stage, and served as a thread weaving together and blurring various culture war issues that seemed to animate Trump more than talking about traditional issues like…