Trump at Tulsa: 'TikTok Grandma' who asked people to sign up for rally and not show up says it was not a prank
A 51-year-old grandmother, whose TikTok video encouraged thousands of youngsters to sign up for President Donald Trump's Tulsa rally and then not attend it, said in a statement that the "no show protest" was not a prank. The woman, Mary Jo Laupp, now popularly the 'TikTok Grandma', said that her video, which went viral, was a powerful moment of protest.
You can watch her video here.
Laupp, from Fort Dodge, Iowa, said that she had never intended her video, which she had posted on the video-sharing platform on June 11, to go viral. The grandmother, in the clip, slammed Trump's original plan to hold the rally on Juneteenth and encouraged young people on TikTok to sign up for the seats in his Tulsa rally, giving a false impression of a massive turnout, and then not go. Juneteenth is celebrated as the day marking the end of slavery in the United States. The president, after public outcry, later changed his rally date to June 20.
The Trump campaign, on June 11, had tweeted urging people to use their phones to register for free tickets for the Tulsa rally. Reports state that K-pop fans shared the information with their groups and urged the followers to get the tickets and not show up for the rally. The plan quickly spread and TikTok users also followed the lead of the K-pop fans, with Laupp reportedly leading part of the charge on TikTok, according to CNN. She posted the video, asking people to "reserve tickets now and leave him standing alone there on the stage."
After the success of her endeavor, the 51-year-old told the outlet: "I don't think it was just an issue of pranking him. You have a lot of kids, in the younger generation — 20-year-olds and teens — who are very aware, much more self-aware when it comes to Black culture. So yes, they are treating it now like it was a prank, but a lot of the messages I got from parents and from kids is: I never knew this much about Black Wall Street. This is so sad. So they are excited about the impact it had. But I think they are becoming much more aware of those marginalized communities, and learning to speak out about them."
The Trump campaign, last week, had said that the president's Tulsa rally at Bank of Oklahoma Center had received over a million requests for tickets. However, the coverage of the event showed that an area meant for overflow was largely empty, and there were thousands of empty seats inside the arena too. According to the Tulsa Fire Department, the turnout at the event was just under 6,200 people, less than half the venue's capacity.
Laupp's viral video was viewed over two million times and has received over 700,000 likes on TikTik so far.
The Trump campaign rubbished the idea that they were "pranked" by youngsters, with the campaign's director of communications, Tim Murtaugh, tweeting: "Trolls thinking they hacked rally tix don’t know how this works. Lame trick tried many times. We weed out bogus RSVPs with fake phone #s." Murtaugh, instead, said that the "real factor" while the participation in Trump's rally was so less because of the "media-stoked fear" of the coronavirus pandemic.
