EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump's campaign ABANDONS online sign-ups for his next rally and asks supporters to just turn up as TikTok teens vow to keep trolling his events after Tulsa debacle
The Trump 2020 campaign abandoned online sign-ups Monday to his next rally in Arizona after being spammed with fake entries by teen trolls on TikTok.
The campaign removed its online form for the Tuesday event and instead told Trump supporters to just turn up to the Students For Trump rally.
The drastic move was taken after the debacle last weekend when campaign chair Brad Parscale boasted he had issued over one million tickets to Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, only to see 6,200 people show up.
The campaign privately admitted that at least 300,000 of the million were take, after teens who had no intention of attending and were merely trolling the campaign at the urging of Korean pop music (K-Pop) influencers and TikTok users bombarded the Trump online sign up system.
Marketing and data experts said the removal of the online form for Trump's next rally in Phoenix is a sign the spamming is continuing – and could have lasting effects for the President's campaign.
The experts said the mischievous teens could cost the campaign massive amounts in donations because instead of building a list of loyal Trump rally attendees to bombard with please for donations, the campaign instead has a database polluted with fake or unfriendly accounts.
End of the registration: This is how the Students for Trump page for its Phoenix, Arizona, event was changed on Monday afternoon
And before: This was the form on Students for Trump's website - which was targeted for another wave of trolling by teenagers and K-Pop fans after they successfully spammed the Tulsa rally on Saturday with at least 300,000 fake applications, rendering data harvested for Trump's re-election bid worthless, according to experts
Plenty of room: The Tulsa, OK, rally saw the stadium just one third full, with a sea of empty seats. It is unclear if this was related to the
New targeting: After huge publicity for the mass troll of Trump's Tulsa rally, online trolls targeted the next event, a 3,000-capacity indoor rally in Phoenix for Students for Trump
The decision to ditch online sign-ups does not provide any evidence that the empty seats at Tulsa were the result of the TikTok-driven campaign.
It remains unclear whether claims that the mass troll had 'crowded out' Trump supporters are true, or whether it was a simple lack of interest among his base which was the cause.
The Trump campaign had repeatedly claimed that TikTok was unrelated to the turnout problem, which itself was reported to have left the president fuming.
But the purpose of asking people for phone numbers and email addresses is not to check if they are TikTok trolls, it is to keep that data and use it to solicit donations and issue reminders to vote.
However the trolls may have left the vast amount of data harvested in Tolsa virtually worthless, experts told DailyMail.com.
'It's a serious problem,' said Joe Gagliese, co-founder of social media marketing firm Viral Nation.
'When you have an influx of a million people like that and they turn out to be fraudulent you have to figure out how you sift through to find the 25,000 or whatever number of genuine interest.
'Breaking down a million data points to find who is an authentic follower in that scenario would be very difficult. The other option would be to send adverts to all of them, and then you're paying to access people who you know obviously don't support you which is a waste of money.'
Claire Ryan, a Vancouver-based web developer and data expert for Pacific Coast Information Systems, said that because of the spammers Trump's campaign will probably have to toss data that would otherwise have been very valuable.
'The goal of the TikTok and K-Pop crew was just to waste the Trump campaign's time with this,' she told DailyMail.com.
'But if the goal of the Trump team was to gather this data to generate leads or use it for an email list, the fact that there are a lot of fake records could prove to be a very significant problem.
'You could try to filter them out, but if 90% of that data is junk, you'd be spending a lot of time and effort for not much reward. That would be a major consideration for their marketing and campaign spend.'
Gagliese said after embarrassing the President in Tulsa, the TikTok trolls were likely to target future rallies up until the election in November.
'I think they're going to do it again,' he said. 'They're going to continue to do it throughout the term.
'It's the new superpower of social media. What's become really easy is for movements to get picked up and spread.
'It leaves the Trump camp in a state where they have to figure out how to qualify the interest that they have, and it might not be possible in the time they have before the election.'
The Trump campaign had been using an online form for supporters to request a ticket for his Tuesday rally, due to be hosted by Students For Trump at the Dream City Church in Phoenix.
The campaign tried to weed out fake sign-ups by asking attendants for a link to their social media accounts, their age and their school.
But anti-Trump trolls posted online joking about how they were going to fool the form – even using their pets' Instagram accounts.
'They're checking ID this time by asking for a social media handle. Not sure what they want with my dog's Instagram but [shrug emoji]' one Twitter user Kris Hansen wrote.
Laupp, from Iowa, says the impact of the video was a powerful sense of community
President Trump was reportedly 'furious' at the 'underwhelming' crowd size in Tulsa on Saturday, putting Brad Parscale at the center of speculation about his future
'oh wow all of a sudden i live in arizona [cowboy hat emoji]' another tweeted.
A Twitter account claiming to represent the anarchist hacking group Anonymous tweeted encouraging K-Pop fans to blitz the Phoenix rally site, and received over 10,000 likes.
'Just putting it out that there are free tickets to see Trump in Arizona. #Anonymous #Kpop #kpopstans trumpstudents.org/convention,' the account, YourAnonNews, wrote.
After being hit with spam and less than 24 hours before the event, the Trump Campaign removed the form, replacing it with a message reading 'Registrations are no longer being accepted.
'If you would like to attend please come to the venue. Venue gates will open at 6am, doors will open at 10am. We recommend arriving early to ensure a great seat!'
Anti-Trump activists told DailyMail.com that they were emboldened by their success at spamming Trump's Tulsa rally, and have since been signing up for tickets to his Phoenix rally and also Vice President Mike Pence's upcoming rally in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin-based mom Ashley said her 13-year-old son and his friends have been creating fake accounts to sign up for tickets.
'As soon as they found out about sign ups, they mass created ghost/fake profiles and linked those,' she told DailyMail.com
'My son and his friends have thousands of followers combined (through tiktok, instagram, etc) and plan to continue to spread the word. They want to make their voices heard, and right now this is the way they feel they can get their point across.
'They absolutely are planning on doing it for the Arizona rally too, as well as VP Pence's visit to Wisconsin this week.'
The Wisconsin Rapids-based mother said that as well as K-Pop fans on TikTok, teens on video game social media sites like Twitch had also piled in to prank the President.
The communications director for the Trump campaign downplayed Laupp's actions
Brad Parscale, campaign manager for Trump's 2020 campaign tweeted that 'radical protestors... interfered with @realDonaldTrump supporters at the rally'. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, responded: '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 Shout out to Zoomers. Y'all make me so proud'
The Trump campaign's chief spokesperson blamed 'media-stoked fear' for the poor attendance at the rally
'It's not uncommon to watch a Fortnite or Valorant streamer play and talk about things that are going on in the country. K-pop is definitely one of the driving forces as well,' she said.
'People seem to write off the gaming community/tiktok community easily and I think that's a problem.'
The energy involved in battling the trolls is ill-timed for Trump's campaign.
It is battling poor poll numbers, worrying fundraising returns which showed Joe Biden taking in more cash than Trump in May, and persistent rumors that Parscale will be fired or sidelined.
The two-thirds empty Tulsa BOK stadium offered a symbol of a campaign in trouble, critics said.
Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old former Democratic campaign volunteer for Pete Buttigieg from Fort Dodge, Iowa, went viral after posting about spamming sign-ups for Trump's Tulsa rally last week.
Laupp told DailyMail.com she was surprised by the impact of the mostly teen-led movement, and that it marks a turning point for Generation Z's involvement in politics.
'I didn't expect this outcome. I fully expected him to pack that arena,' she said.
'I know students have already been all over TikTok and Twitter saying "there's a student rally in Arizona, let's make this go viral again."'
'The K-Pop crowd and teenagers on TikTok are definitely already mobilizing to make the same thing happen there.'
Laupp said she thinks the spam sign-ups were only a small part of the reason for a low turnout at Trump's Tulsa rally on Saturday, but that TikTok teens had taken the win all the same.
'Regardless of the real reason for the numbers on Saturday night, teenagers have been messaging me saying 'We did this, we had this impact, I was a part of this,' she said.
'There were teenagers who had all-night house parties after the rally. They were celebrating what felt like a political victory for them.
'They feel empowered and energized, and I think it will have more of an impact if Gen Xers stand aside and let them prove to the world they don't need us to be activated and politically involved.
'I think this will really let both parties know these young people want to be involved and want to have a voice. But they're not going to do politics the same way it's always been done. They want to use the technology they're comfortable with to impact the campaign.'
