MUST READ… Report: Tulsa Arena Management Sabotaged Trump Rally Attendance

Gateway Pundit ^ | 06/28/2020 | Cristina Laila

[SeekAndFind]

An article published several days ago written by an anonymous attendee made the claim that the management for the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma sabotaged attendance for the campaign rally by President Trump held there last Saturday resulting in thousands of empty seats in the BOK Center and the cancellation of plans for Trump and Vice President Pence to speak to an expected overflow crowd of thousands on a stage set up just outside the arena before speaking at the rally inside.

The fire marshal and arena management put attendance at just over 6,000 while the Trump campaign claimed 12,000 had cleared metal detectors.

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

A June 25 report by Armstrong Economics claimed that early in the day on Saturday BOK Center staff had placed stickers on every other seat in the arena barring use thereby cutting in half the attendance of the 19,199 seat arena. That report was not corroborated until Friday and Saturday when Billboard and the Washington Post respectively reported on the stickers and pushback by the Trump campaign that had campaign workers peeling the stickers off the seats right before the rally.

The other allegations of sabotage made by the attendee are that BOK Center temperature screeners were pulled off the job hours early, thereby making it impossible for rally attendees to get the green wristbands needed to advance to the Secret Service metal detectors for entry into the arena and the overflow stage area for the Trump and Pence speeches, and that cleared attendees were only allowed inside the arena in groups of one hundred at a time.

What makes the allegation of an effort to drive down attendance plausible is the celebratory tweet the night of the rally by Jay Marciano, head of the management company for the BOK Center, AEG–part of ASM Global, on the low recorded attendance, “Lying Don’s show in Tulsa is a big fat STIFF! There are only 6624 people in the arena. So much for “There were requests for 1 million.” Total lies. Are we surprised??

Screen image via Showbiz411

Excerpt from Armstrong Economics:

…5. The BOK center just before the doors opened had block off every other seat in the arena so the arena could only hold about 9500 people.

6. After continued back and forth with the trump campaign, something happened to allow more people in (in groups of just 100 at a time). We had to wait about 30 minutes each time for them to let just 100 of us trickle into the building. I am not talking about their security- we had already passed through metal detectors and everything. You could actually run into the building each time they would let just 100 of us in at a time, but that was just just wrong and corrupt on BOK management’s part. They removed the stickers/rule on every other seat – that is true, but only after they shut down all entry to the “event location”.

7. I looked over at the screening area and told my wife- something fishy is gong on- 2 hours before the rally – the screeners have left. I told her- no one can get to the stage/overflow area or the BOK center with the “temperature screeners” gone. It is like the people that collect tickets say- I am done we are leaving.

8. They left their posts and from what I am learning- thousands could not get in to the first checkpoint because the temperature screeners had to put green wrist band on you to gain access to the Secret Service security checkpoint. No green band— no entry to the security check point.

9. I think the BOK management told the screeners – we have reached the capacity for what we are letting into the BOK center, so shut down- do not allow the other Trump supporters to get a temperature check and no more green wrist bands. Do not issue green wrist bands so they can get into the holding area to see the stage for the outdoor Trump Rally.

10. It was all a setup to make it look like the crowds did not show up. The crowds DID show up and after 5pm,- 2 hours before the event- no one was there to let them get to security…

End excerpt. Please read the complete article at Armstrong Economics.

Note, Martin Armstrong has a checkered past.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that the BOK Center purchased 12,000 stickers to block off seats which would have brought attendance to around 7,000 in the 19,199 seat venue–close to what the head of AEG gloat-tweeted the night of the rally.

Post excerpt via Tulsa World.

In the hours before his rally in Tulsa, President Trump’s campaign directed the removal of thousands of “Do Not Sit Here, Please!” stickers from seats in the arena that were intended to establish social distance between rallygoers, according to video and photos obtained by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the event.

The removal contradicted instructions from the management of the BOK Center, the 19,000-seat arena in downtown Tulsa where Trump held his rally on June 20. At the time, coronavirus cases were rising sharply in Tulsa County, and Trump faced intense criticism for convening a large crowd for an indoor political rally, his first such event since the start of the pandemic.

As part of its safety plan, arena management had purchased 12,000 do-not-sit stickers for Trump’s rally, intended to keep people apart by leaving open seats between attendees. On the day of the rally, event staff had already affixed them on nearly every other seat in the arena when Trump’s campaign told event management to stop and then began removing the stickers, hours before the president’s arrival, according to a person familiar with the event who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters…

Billboard was first to report on the seat sticker controversy with an article published Friday (excerpt):

Hours before President Donald Trump took the stage last Saturday at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for his first rally in the COVID-19 era, arena workers were busy labeling thousands of seats with “Do Not Sit Here Please!” stickers to promote social distancing, part of a new safety protocol at the arena known as VenueShield.

Campaign staff quickly radioed over to an executive at ASM Global and asked the arena to stop labeling the seats. In fact, “they also told us that they didn’t want any signs posted saying we should social distance in the venue,” says Doug Thornton, executive vp for ASM Global, who oversees nearly 100 arenas across five continents for the venue management company created by the 2019 merger of AEG and SMG.

Thorton said ASM was simply following the company’s new VenueShield program, developed with doctors, industry experts and infectious disease specialists to prevent the spread of coronavirus at ASM’s 325 venues worldwide. The event was general admission-only meaning all seats were first come, first serve. The stickers were a mandatory component of VenueShield, ASM continued stickering every other seat when something unexpected happened: “The campaign went through and removed the stickers,” says Thornton.

A video created by a third party and reviewed by Billboard shows Trump staffers methodically walking the aisles of BOK Center and peeling the three-inch square stickers from thousands of chairs ahead of the “Make America Great Again” rally. (Trump’s campaign did not respond to Billboard’s request for comment.)…

…While organizers faced criticism for staging a rally during a pandemic, Thornton says ASM had no legal basis to stop the event. The state’s Republican governor, its nine state supreme court justices and Tulsa’s Republican mayor signed off on the event and said it had a legal right to move forward — although mayor G.T. Bynum later said he would have supported ASM Global if it had canceled the rally, prompting mayoral aide Jack Graham to resign in protest…

…But even if ASM Global had wanted to cancel the rally, Thornton didn’t think the company had the legal authority to block the President from using the publicly-owned arena. Oklahoma state law was clear, Thornton says?: Since the state had entered phase 3 of its reactivation plan, full capacity events like the Trump campaign rally were allowed, and the city’s public safety agencies had already signed off on the event.

End excerpt. Please read the complete Billboard article at this link.

[dfwgator]

Duh!

[CondoleezzaProtege]

This is spiritual warfare. Prayer and fasting and our own repentance may shift the tide if it is the will of God.

[Maudeen]

Evil abound. . .people are willfully being used as pawns of satan. They don’t have a conscience.

[Bommer]

No its not! This is Satanic DNC jerry mandering. Dox the person behind it.

[coaster123]

Another 2,000 years ought to do it.

Malevolent.

[Guenevere]

Bump

[V K Lee]

Thank you for posting this. After the twitter from a boastful blowhard was posted here these evening, attempted to find this account and unable to do so. Again, thanks!

[caww]

It’s going to be ‘challenging’ to continue with Rallies. We all know it’s part of the lefts effort to drive a wedge between Trump and the voters....Demorats do not want to see the “visuals” of huge arenas packed crossing the news networks......since Joes lucky if he fills a high school Gym.

[bigbob]

Lessons learned, the enemy has shown its hand early. This won’t happen again. Just watch.

[Newbomb Turk]

How long before Trump supporters get pissed and storm the gates ?

[Nailbiter]

flr

[AndyJackson]

So it was fraud, and the guy responsible proclaimed gleefully he did it.

You can start changing the name to Trump Stadium. Direct and consequential damages, trebbled.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3860090/posts

[yesthatjallen]

The Trump team is being overwhelmed.

They need more people at these events to DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.

They should be taking time stamp photos of the arenas to show how the venue is filling up. Have video cameras running with time stamps.

Have 3 or 4 people at the doors with counters. Have everyone go through a turnstile to keep count.

Have multiple cameras filming people in the arena being screened.

More cameras. More people in the arena filming everything going on.

DOCUMENT EVERYTHING IN REAL TIME.

[coaster123]

I know! When is somebody else gonna do something?!?

[Delta 21]

Shenanigans?

Who’d a thunk it.

[PghBaldy]

He also interfered with the First Amendment Rights of the People who wanted to get in.

[yesthatjallen]

Shenanigans?

They couldn't get away with it if the Trump Team hired more people to photography, film, and document everything in real time.

Trump wouldn't have to find ways to debunk this after the fact if he had people filming every area and every location in and outside the venue.

[TChad]

A female caller to Chris Plante's radio show claimed to have tried to get in to the Tulsa rally, but she was turned away at the entrance. She said there were plenty of police there, and that there were enough people waiting outside to have filled the venue -- if they had been let in.

She seemed credible to me.

I thought the crowd was smaller than expected probably because people did not want to wind up stuck outside in a huge crowd, but from what she said, whoever was in charge decided to limit the crowd size.

The truth is out there.