President Trump’s reelection campaign said late Saturday that his rally in Tulsa, Okla., his first since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, attracted 4 million viewers online.
“President Trump’s rally in Tulsa attracted over 4 million unique viewers across all of the campaign’s digital media channels. The live-streamed pre-rally shows drew an audience of more than 2.5 million unique viewers by themselves. These numbers don’t even include television viewers,” Tim Murtaugh, the director of communications for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement.
“The news media, which encouraged protestors and bombarded Americans for more than a week with dire warnings against attending a Trump rally, are still unable to prevent President Trump from reaching the people,” Murtaugh added. “These numbers represent unmatched enthusiasm behind the President’s re-election and a massive audience that Joe Biden can only dream of.”
The statement came after numerous Democratic lawmakers mocked the president’s campaign for lower than expected attendance at the event. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), for example, quipped that the low attendance was due to a combination of people fearing the coronavirus and the release of the 2019 film “Knives Out” on Amazon.
Pop star Pink also took a shot at the rally attendance, tweeting of the BOK Center, “I think I sold that place out in five minutes.”
Several Twitter users also compared the rally to Trump’s 2017 inauguration, when then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”
Murtaugh and Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale blamed the in-person attendance on protesters and the media, with Murtaugh claiming demonstrators blocked access to the metal detectors.
The Trump campaign said ahead of the rally that it received more than 1 million ticket requests, for which users of the TikTok app have claimed credit, saying they deliberately placed requests while not intending to show up in person.