Legions of K-pop fans turn to political activism to thwart Trump rally

TWITTER

While thousands of Trump supporters attended the Tulsa rally, it was far short of expectations.

UPDATED June 21, 2 p.m. to include final attendance numbers.

K-pop fans, known for their zealousness, weaponized their social media prowess against the Donald Trump campaign.

Instead of the hundreds of thousands expected at the Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma Saturday, the 19,000 arena looked empty with only 6,200 in attendance and the preparations for the outdoor overflow went unused.

Part of reason for the low attendance at the BOK Center can be attributed to the alliance between fans of the Korean pop music genre, Tik Tok Talkers, Zoomers and other social media netizns who were urged to reserve tickets to the Trump campaign event on false accounts with no intention of attending.

Trump had boasted that millions of tickets were requested and the campaign prepared for a crowd of 100,000.

The anti-Trump campaign was done in secret and it wasn't until late Saturday did its effectiveness was shown when more than half the seats in the auditorium were empty.

Former Republican political strategist Steve Schmidt, an outspoken critic of Trump, tweeted on Saturday night: "My 16 year old daughter and her friends in Park City Utah have hundreds of tickets. You have been rolled by America's teens.

'@realDonaldTrump you have been failed by your team. You have been deserted by your faithful. No one likes to root for the losing team.'

Several young activists posted videos on social media encouraging other K-pop fans and TikTok users to request tickets using fake names and phone numbers, and even offered instructions on how to generate phone numbers using Google Voice and other internet-connected phone services.

“We all know the Trump campaign feeds on data, they are constantly mining these rallies for data,” Mary Jo Laupp, a former employee of Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for president, told the New York Times. “Feeding them false data was a bonus. The data they think they have, the data they are collecting from this rally, isn’t accurate.”

Schimidt added: "This is what happened tonight. I'm dead serious when I say this. The teens of America have struck a savage blow against @realDonaldTrump. All across America teens ordered tickets to this event. The fools on the campaign bragged about a million tickets. lol." 

Twitter users acknowledged the influence the young people had in fizzling out the Trump rally.

Fans of K-pop groups like BTS, Black Pink and other South Korean groups have been getting increasingly involved in American politics in recent months using their social media savvy and their globa network to support causes like Black Lives Matter and to overwhelm hashtags like #Allliesmatter and #Whitelivesmatter. 

After the Trump campaign solicited messages for the Trump's birthday on June 8, K-pop fans posted a ton of prank messages.

Click here to view some of the Tik Toc Talkers trolling Trump

Earlier this month, when the Dallas Police Department asked citizens to submit videos of suspicious or illegal activity through a dedicated app, K-pop Twitter claimed credit for crashing the app by uploading thousands of “fancam” videos of their favorite K-pop groups.

They also reclaimed the #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag in May, by spamming it with endless K- pop videos, making it harder for white supremacists and sympathizers to find one another and communicate their messaging.

After BTS, the immensely popular boy group, donated $1-million to Black Lives Matter aftre the death of George Floyd, within 24 hours, the group's fans matched the sum.

Whether it was a teenage prank or a political act, ithe K-pop fandom's influence and activism  caught the attention of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the savviest politicians using social media, who praised the Zoomers and K-pop allies involved in reserving tickets.

AAPI clap back against Trump's racist tweet

SCREEN CAPTURE / NBC

Donald Trump attacked the four congresswomen, above, from left: Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. They had a press conference Monday.

Donald Trump's racist tweet attacking four Congress of color drew a firestorm of criticism and new accusations of racism. One congressmember called him a "racist ass."
Early Sunday morning, Trump posted the following tweets. Although he didn't mention them by name, he was addressing the strong attacks against his policies from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Trump also claimed that the four Democrats "came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe." Three of the four congresswomen were born in the U.S. Only Omar was born in a foreign country and she was naturalized in her teens.

Perhaps one of the strongest condemnations of Trump didn't come from members of the Democratic Party but from the husband of Trump advisor Kelly Anne Conway.

To George Conway, who is a Filipino American, Trump's tweet against four freshman Congressmembers - telling the women of color to go back where they came from, was personal.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Conway recalled an incident when he was a child, "I remember the incident well, but it never bothered me all that much. Nor did racial slurs, which, thankfully, were rare. None of it was troublesome, to my mind, because most Americans weren’t like that," Conway wrote before noting how "naive a child could be."

He listed some of the things Trump said or instigated that led up to the Sunday morning tweet that elicited an avalanche of condemnation from Democrats and mostly silence from Republicans.

Conway wrote further that "no matter how much I found [Trump] ultimately unfit, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt about being a racist."

"What’s at stake now is more important than judges or tax cuts or regulations or any policy issue of the day," Conway concluded. "What’s at stake are the nation’s ideals, its very soul."

"But Sunday left no doubt. Naiveté, resentment and outright racism, roiled in a toxic mix, have given us a racist president," he argued. 

Members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus also had strong reactions against Trump's tweet. Rep. Ted Lieu of California held nothing . back in his interview on MSNBC, calling Trump a "racist ass."

"Far too many in our community have been stereotyped as foreigners and told to ‘go back to where they came from’ regardless of how long their families have lived in the United States,” said Rep. Judy Chu in an interview with HuffPost.

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