On June 15, Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted that they had received more than a million “requests” to attend the rally. The New York Times and CNN both ran stories largely crediting TikTokers and K-pop fans for the disparity in expectations. The Trump campaign released a statement about the claims: “Reporters who wrote gleefully about TikTok and K-pop fans — without contacting the campaign for comment — behaved unprofessionally and were willing dupes to the charade. The common refrain shifted from “TikTokers and K-pop fans lead Trump to overestimate his crowd” to “TikTokers and K-pop fans are the reason fewer than 6,200 people showed up to the event.” The former assertion is almost certainly true to some degree, but the latter is not only unlikely but probably false. K-pop fans recently clogged racist hashtags with funny GIFs, rendering them useless.

Source: Washington Post June 21, 2020 21:52 UTC