\the_nation

0
2020.06.22

We're the Kids in America

Tiktokers Trump Trump in Tulsa


President Trump returns from his rally in Tulsa, OK President Trump returns from his campaign rally in Tulsa, OK. Photo Credit: Newsday

Word spread like wildfire across social media: Tiktokers — that is, members of the social media platform "TikTok", who tend to be younger and produce excruciating content my teen finds hilarious, were apparently responsible for handing President Trump probably his most notable loss of his re-election campaign yet.

Apparently, members of the social media platform contacted the Trump campaign and reserved tickets — thousands upon thousands of tickets — for the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma scheduled for Fathers' Day weekend.

But the gag was, none of them had any intention of actually attending the rally.

The ruse was brilliant: Tiktokers reserved tens of thousands of tickets, making the Trump Campaign believe the rally would be well-attended. (Reporting from The Washington Post suggests the plan originated among TikTok users who are fans of Korean pop music — also known as K-pop.) 1

I have second-hand information that claim the actual attendance was 6,611. The source, I was told, is someone who actually worked the rally.




Images of the campaign rally. Photo credit: BusinessInsider, Gannett

The ruse is probably also responsible for a huge sigh of relief from the city of Tulsa. After the city made repeated requests to the campaign to not hold the rally for fear a COVID-19 outbreak would overwhelm its emergency response and health systems, lawsuits were filed to prevent the campaign from holding the rally.

(The campaign went so far as to make ticketholders sign waivers, releasing the campaign of any responsibility should the attendee catch the COVID-19 disease as a result of attendance.)

Tulsa must love TikTok today.

According to the Washington Post, the Trump Campaign immediately set to spinning the reason for the low turnout: "The Trump campaign on Sunday sought to blame concerns about protesters for the lower-than-expected turnout at the president’s Tulsa rally, even though the campaign itself had raised expectations about attendance by touting the number of people who had signed up for tickets online." 2.  One can't blame the campaign about their expectations on the tickets, though — a great many did sign up for them.


My Conclusion

The president's re-election campaign was dealt a stinging blow by the youth of America. My surmise is the President will seek to retaliate, and his target will be Tiktok.

The social media platform is actually a Chinese venture, which means shutting it down will likely become the stuff of international relations. Security analyses published months ago showed that the app employs an unusual, non-standard encryption method, which led to speculation that China is likely collecting TikTok data. Published reports indicated that US military forces were forbidden from installing the app on their devices because of the discovery of the unusual encryption.

Excerpts from John Bolton's latest book, The Room Where It Happened, either leaked online or published in part by news outlets having received advance copies, show that President Trump has been particularly deferential to Xi Jinping, even going so far as asking him for help in getting re-elected.

In my opinion, given Trump-Xi relations, retaliation seems unlikely, or at least "on ice" until a time when tensions are high — but — the Trump Administration could certainly frame the nonstandard encryption as a national security threat and use that as justification for having SmartPhone app distributors like Apple and Google remove TikTok from their U.S. stores, and perhaps from U.S. users' devices.



personal statement

Humor posts aside, I only seek to understand the events I describe in these posts, and to form an opinion after considering the material I've gathered. I believe we need leaders in Washington to act in the best interest of the United States as a citizen nation of the world, and who represent the interests of the people they serve above the interests of party affiliation.