TikTok Prank on Trump Favorite 

Users on the social media app TikTok are claiming some credit for the disappointing turnout at the president's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the weekend, after a weeks-long campaign to artificially inflate the number of people registered to attend. The prank may have helped lead the Trump campaign to boast about more than a million people seeking tickets for the rally — while only about 6,200 ended up filling seats.

In the weeks leading up to the rally, TikTok users started spreading the idea of registering for free tickets with no intention of going — in hopes that they would take seats away from Trump supporters, and leave the president speaking to a hollowed-out stadium.

One of the most prominent posts about the prank came from 51-year-old Mary Jo Laupp, an Iowa woman who worked on Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign. "I recommend that all of us who want to see this 19,000-seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty, go reserve tickets now, and leave him standing alone on the stage," she said. "What do you say?" Laupp said she was particularly outraged by Mr. Trump's decision to host the rally in Tulsa — the site of a racist massacre of about 300 black people in 1921 — on Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves. After initial uproar, the campaign rescheduled the rally for the day after Juneteenth.

She pointed out that the campaign allows anyone to sign up for two free tickets if they provide their phone number. Laupp suggested people register and then unsubscribe from the text messages the Trump campaign would try sending them. The joke caught fire with TikTok users — mostly teens — who posted about how they signed up for tickets for the rally with no intention of attending. One user posted a video showing she registered as "Hugh Jass."

Even teens outside the U.S. got involved. Roberto Quinlan, a professor at York University in Toronto, said his teenage daughter told him about the prank and was eager to see how it turned out. He compared it to the political tricks once pulled by Roger Stone, the former Trump adviser who is set to serve prison time for obstruction charges stemming from the Mueller investigation.

"This is probably the type of political op that would be given the Roger Stone seal of approval — if it had been carried out by a campaign he worked for," Quinlan told CBS News.

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez highlighted the role that TikTok users played in pulling one over on the president's campaign: "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," she wrote on Twitter to Parscale after he blamed protesters for the low turnout.

Report written by Jason Silverstein.