During Donald Trump’s birthday military parade on Saturday evening, an activist shared a video on Meta’s Threads platform revealing that their TikTok clip—explaining how to secure tickets for the event—had garnered over a million views. Neither the activist nor many viewers intended to actually attend the rally. Instead, they were among numerous social media users who, in recent days, circulated guides on reserving tickets without any plans to show up.
Despite the rainy weather and looming thunderstorms, attendance at the parade appeared relatively light on Saturday evening, though crowd size is notoriously hard to estimate in real-time.
Online, however, many users celebrated, claiming responsibility—similar to what happened in 2020—for diminishing turnout. “We are expecting a massive crowd — hundreds of thousands,” said Matt McCool, the special agent-in-charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Washington, D.C. office, during a security briefing on Monday.
One user joked, “I grabbed 10 tickets here in Australia. Oops, won’t be attending.” Another added, “Europeans couldn’t use their tickets here. Sending solidarity from Scotland!”
Back in 2020, at the peak of Trump’s initial and unsuccessful reelection bid, he launched a rally tour with a large Juneteenth event in Tulsa. Social media users—including notably organized K-pop fans—encouraged their followers to reserve tickets with the goal of leaving seats empty and the president facing a sparse crowd.
When Trump ultimately addressed a half-empty arena, many online teenagers took credit, although the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic at the time likely played a significant role in reducing attendance.
This episode arises at a sensitive time for social media platforms, especially TikTok, which remains available in the U.S. because President Trump opted not to enforce a law that would have banned the app unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sold it to an American or other non-Chinese buyer.
Users on the TikTok social media platform are taking credit for the unexpectedly low attendance at President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the weekend. This followed weeks of efforts to inflate the number of people registered for the event. The prank appears to have contributed to the Trump campaign’s claim that over a million people requested tickets, while only around 6,200 actually attended.
In the weeks before the rally, TikTok users encouraged others to register for free tickets without any plans to attend. Their goal was to reduce the number of actual supporters in the seats and have the president speaking to a largely empty venue.
One of the most notable voices promoting the prank was Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old from Iowa who worked on Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign.
“I suggest everyone who wants to see this 19,000-seat auditorium nearly empty or completely vacant should reserve tickets now, and leave him standing alone on stage,” she said. “What do you think?”
Laupp explained that she was especially upset by President Trump’s choice to hold the rally in Tulsa — the site of a 1921 racist massacre that killed about 300 Black residents — on Juneteenth, a day marking the emancipation of enslaved people. Following public backlash, the campaign rescheduled the rally for the day after Juneteenth.
