Trump Staten Island rally: Tulsa-style plan to sabotage meet goes wrong, TikTokers end up paying $16K to GOP
TikTok teens tried, once again, to put a dent on a Republican rally in Staten Island last week — just like they did in Tulsa in the summer — but it seems the plan failed completely. Republican officials learned a valuable lesson after the June debacle, and successfully turned the attempted sabotage into tens of thousands of dollars in donations for the GOP — all funded by the TikTokers themselves.
“On September 19, out-of-staters using fake, frequently lewd names — including ‘Grabemby DePussay,’ ‘Ivana Punchyou’, and ‘F–kyou Trump’ — began signing up online for the ‘TRiUMPh Rally,’ a free get-out-the-vote event,” the New York Post reported. “We had about 1,500 RSVPs from Staten Islanders,” Staten Island GOP chairman Brendan Lantry explained to the outlet. “Then all of a sudden we started seeing the numbers tick up to 10,000, 15,000, 75,000. We knew something was not right.”
Lantry's wife Jessica reportedly unearthed a popular TikTok video by 19-year-old Brooklynite 'Felisrae', who was seen urging her followers to foil the event by signing up and not attending. She has since made the video private. “Do you hate this orange b**** as much as I do?” Felisrae was quoted by The New York Post as saying. “It turns out that Trump is having a rally in Staten Island... So what I did was, I reserved myself two seats. But I’m pretty sure that I have something to do that day. So, do what you want with this information.”
The video went on to garner millions of views and inspired scores of her followers to spread the message. “Register for this. I did,” one user wrote on Facebook. “Let’s learn from Gen Z and Tulsa!” (The post was later deleted) “Order them so their numbers will be way off and they’ll expect more people,” another added on Twitter.
Order them so their numbers will be way off and they’ll expect more people! Check out "New York TRIUMPH Rally" https://t.co/i30zzADJnR @Eventbrite
— EarthAngel4u🌊 (@EarthAngel4u975) September 19, 2020
Just like Tulsa, anti-Trump TikTokers attempted to reserve as many tickets as possible so the Staten Island event would suffer in terms of attendance. Many, including Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had celebrated after the president's first post-lockdown campaign rally was an attendance bust. “Radical protestors, fueled by a week of apocalyptic media coverage, interfered with [Donald Trump] supporters at the rally," then-Trump 2020 Campaign chief Brad Parscale had revealed following the event. “They even blocked access to the metal detectors, preventing people from entering. Thanks to the 1,000s who made it anyway!”
“Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign with fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during Covid,” AOC tweeted in response to Parscale. “Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud.”
Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020
Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. ☺️ https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T
This time, however, event organizers added a non-refundable $5 fee to reserve tickets in an attempt to dissuade the anti-Trump brigade. “But they kept coming. From Colorado and California and Chicago and Houston, all over the country,” Lantry said. “They hate this president so much that they’re willing to donate to the Republican Party to troll him.”
Eventually, Never-Trumpers ended up donating $15,785 due to the reservation fee. As reported by The New York Post, there were "no seats" at the open-air rally, which drew over 2,500 locals who wished the president well as he recovered from Covid-19.