The rally made headlines for its empty seats, but things were even worse behind the scenes, writes Jonathan Karl. The president feuded with advisers, shouted down objections, and ended up with a car full of sick staffers—and one who was “worried he was going to die.”
By Jonathan Karl
November 11, 2021
On April 24, 2020, Donald Trump received a grim message on a conference call with his campaign advisers. Campaign manager Brad Parscale walked the president through polls conducted by his pollster. The results were dreadful.
“In February, you were on track to win more than four hundred electoral votes,” Parscale told him, saying he had been poised to win even bigger than he won in 2016. “But now you are losing ground everywhere.”
Parscale later told me he didn’t sugarcoat the bad news, telling the president that the pandemic, and public disapproval of his response, had been devastating to his standing and that if he didn’t turn things around, he would lose.
“If I lose, I’m going to sue you,” Trump said.
“I love you, too,” Parscale answered. He insists the president was joking about the lawsuit, but he was obviously angry about his tanking poll numbers.
The next week, Trump did in fact take a break from his daily press conferences. They would come back, but only sporadically. The daily Trump Show in the White House briefing room was over. Trump needed another outlet. The key to turning around his polls, he told his advisors, was to get out on the road again. He had not held a campaign rally since March 2, and he was convinced that was his real problem. He was desperate to get out of the White House and in front of his adoring supporters.
“He was just beside himself,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a close advisor to Trump whom he called frequently throughout the campaign for advice, told me. “All he could think about was the campaign. He didn’t talk much about anything else. COVID would come into it, but really his focus was on the campaign.”
During another contentious campaign conference call in May, Trump demanded that Parscale put together a plan to get him back on the road as soon as possible. He made this demand as coronavirus infections and deaths continued to skyrocket and all large events—from concerts and baseball games to weddings and funerals—were on hold due to a nationwide shutdown.
Parscale presented Trump with a series of options for a first rally in June. He first proposed a drive-in rally in Tampa, Florida. Parscale told him a drive-in rally would be a great spectacle, with a line of cars stretching for miles. But Trump hated that idea. He didn’t want cars; he wanted a crowd. Parscale next put together a presentation of eleven other possible locations, most of them in outdoor venues, including Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. Parscale even pitched Trump on a twelfth option: holding a boat rally outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. According to Parscale, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told the campaign to pick a location outside of Florida because the state wasn’t ready to hold a big event due to the threat of the pandemic.
Trump wanted to relaunch his campaign with a bang, a real Trump rally—indoors and packed with people. Exactly the kind of thing that was happening nowhere in America—or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. He chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had a friendly Republican governor and mayor—a place where, given COVID, holding a rally might be dangerous, but, unlike in most other states, it wouldn’t be against the law.
The campaign announced the rally for June 19 and then moved it back a day after facing intense criticism for holding it on Juneteenth, the long-celebrated date marking the freedom of the last slaves in America. The controversy and the date change didn’t slow the campaign’s hype machine, which was portraying the rally as the Super Bowl of campaign events. “Trump #MAGA Rally in Tulsa is hottest ticket ever!” Parscale tweeted a week before the scheduled date. Days later, he tweeted again: “Just passed 800,000 tickets. Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x. Saturday is going to be amazing!” The following day, Parscale again bragged about the reservation numbers, claiming they’d received more than 1 million ticket requests.
WATCH
Trump was thrilled. Not only would he be back on the campaign trail, his massive rally would prove America was back and the pandemic had been defeated. Trump’s campaign aides believed the rally would show that the news media was overhyping the threat of the pandemic. But concerns were being expressed by public health officials in Oklahoma. One week before the scheduled date, the executive director of the Tulsa Health Department pleaded with Trump to delay the rally.
“I think it’s an honor for Tulsa to have a sitting president want to come and visit our community, but not during a pandemic,” Dr. Bruce Dart told the local newspaper, the Tulsa World. “I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well.”
During an event at the White House on June 15, Trump brushed off a question about those concerns, boasting about the size of the crowd he expected to show up.
“As you probably have heard, and we’re getting exact numbers out, but we’re either close to or over one million people wanting to go,” Trump said. “Nobody has ever heard of numbers like this. I think we’re going to have a great time.”
Privately, Trump was even more elated about his return to the campaign trail.
“We’re back, baby,” Trump told Chris Christie over the phone a few days before the rally, repeating the claim that more than a million people had signed up for tickets. “This is gonna be great. We are getting back on the road and the campaign back on track.”
In reality, the Tulsa rally would end up being a political disaster and, for Trump, the worst day of his entire campaign.
The night before the rally, Trump campaign staffers who had traveled to Oklahoma partied together at the restaurant bar of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tulsa. The tight-knit team had not been all together for a rally in months. They were ready to celebrate, drinking together until well past midnight. After the bar closed, some in the group retreated to a staff room in the hotel and raided the minibar—drinking and celebrating well into the morning hours. Nobody bothered to keep their distance or wear masks. As it turned out, the virus wasn’t just spreading across the country—it was also spreading among the Trump campaign staff.
The following morning, staffers woke up hungover from the festivities and skulked downstairs for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. As one of the senior campaign officials described it, they were eating “crappy bagels” when word came that members of the team had tested positive for COVID- 19.
“Put your mask on,” one campaign aide told another, hunched over breakfast food. “We have staff popping positive.”
“How many?” they replied.
“We’re already at eight.”
www.vanityfair.com
By Jonathan Karl
November 11, 2021
On April 24, 2020, Donald Trump received a grim message on a conference call with his campaign advisers. Campaign manager Brad Parscale walked the president through polls conducted by his pollster. The results were dreadful.
“In February, you were on track to win more than four hundred electoral votes,” Parscale told him, saying he had been poised to win even bigger than he won in 2016. “But now you are losing ground everywhere.”
Parscale later told me he didn’t sugarcoat the bad news, telling the president that the pandemic, and public disapproval of his response, had been devastating to his standing and that if he didn’t turn things around, he would lose.
“If I lose, I’m going to sue you,” Trump said.
“I love you, too,” Parscale answered. He insists the president was joking about the lawsuit, but he was obviously angry about his tanking poll numbers.
The next week, Trump did in fact take a break from his daily press conferences. They would come back, but only sporadically. The daily Trump Show in the White House briefing room was over. Trump needed another outlet. The key to turning around his polls, he told his advisors, was to get out on the road again. He had not held a campaign rally since March 2, and he was convinced that was his real problem. He was desperate to get out of the White House and in front of his adoring supporters.
“He was just beside himself,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a close advisor to Trump whom he called frequently throughout the campaign for advice, told me. “All he could think about was the campaign. He didn’t talk much about anything else. COVID would come into it, but really his focus was on the campaign.”
During another contentious campaign conference call in May, Trump demanded that Parscale put together a plan to get him back on the road as soon as possible. He made this demand as coronavirus infections and deaths continued to skyrocket and all large events—from concerts and baseball games to weddings and funerals—were on hold due to a nationwide shutdown.
Parscale presented Trump with a series of options for a first rally in June. He first proposed a drive-in rally in Tampa, Florida. Parscale told him a drive-in rally would be a great spectacle, with a line of cars stretching for miles. But Trump hated that idea. He didn’t want cars; he wanted a crowd. Parscale next put together a presentation of eleven other possible locations, most of them in outdoor venues, including Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. Parscale even pitched Trump on a twelfth option: holding a boat rally outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. According to Parscale, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told the campaign to pick a location outside of Florida because the state wasn’t ready to hold a big event due to the threat of the pandemic.
Trump wanted to relaunch his campaign with a bang, a real Trump rally—indoors and packed with people. Exactly the kind of thing that was happening nowhere in America—or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. He chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had a friendly Republican governor and mayor—a place where, given COVID, holding a rally might be dangerous, but, unlike in most other states, it wouldn’t be against the law.
The campaign announced the rally for June 19 and then moved it back a day after facing intense criticism for holding it on Juneteenth, the long-celebrated date marking the freedom of the last slaves in America. The controversy and the date change didn’t slow the campaign’s hype machine, which was portraying the rally as the Super Bowl of campaign events. “Trump #MAGA Rally in Tulsa is hottest ticket ever!” Parscale tweeted a week before the scheduled date. Days later, he tweeted again: “Just passed 800,000 tickets. Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x. Saturday is going to be amazing!” The following day, Parscale again bragged about the reservation numbers, claiming they’d received more than 1 million ticket requests.
WATCH
Trump was thrilled. Not only would he be back on the campaign trail, his massive rally would prove America was back and the pandemic had been defeated. Trump’s campaign aides believed the rally would show that the news media was overhyping the threat of the pandemic. But concerns were being expressed by public health officials in Oklahoma. One week before the scheduled date, the executive director of the Tulsa Health Department pleaded with Trump to delay the rally.
“I think it’s an honor for Tulsa to have a sitting president want to come and visit our community, but not during a pandemic,” Dr. Bruce Dart told the local newspaper, the Tulsa World. “I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well.”
During an event at the White House on June 15, Trump brushed off a question about those concerns, boasting about the size of the crowd he expected to show up.
“As you probably have heard, and we’re getting exact numbers out, but we’re either close to or over one million people wanting to go,” Trump said. “Nobody has ever heard of numbers like this. I think we’re going to have a great time.”
Privately, Trump was even more elated about his return to the campaign trail.
“We’re back, baby,” Trump told Chris Christie over the phone a few days before the rally, repeating the claim that more than a million people had signed up for tickets. “This is gonna be great. We are getting back on the road and the campaign back on track.”
In reality, the Tulsa rally would end up being a political disaster and, for Trump, the worst day of his entire campaign.
The night before the rally, Trump campaign staffers who had traveled to Oklahoma partied together at the restaurant bar of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tulsa. The tight-knit team had not been all together for a rally in months. They were ready to celebrate, drinking together until well past midnight. After the bar closed, some in the group retreated to a staff room in the hotel and raided the minibar—drinking and celebrating well into the morning hours. Nobody bothered to keep their distance or wear masks. As it turned out, the virus wasn’t just spreading across the country—it was also spreading among the Trump campaign staff.
The following morning, staffers woke up hungover from the festivities and skulked downstairs for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. As one of the senior campaign officials described it, they were eating “crappy bagels” when word came that members of the team had tested positive for COVID- 19.
“Put your mask on,” one campaign aide told another, hunched over breakfast food. “We have staff popping positive.”
“How many?” they replied.
“We’re already at eight.”
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Lawsuit Threats, Empty Seats, and a “COVID Mobile”: Trump’s Disastrous Tulsa Rally Was Even More of a Train Wreck Than Originally Thought
The rally made headlines for its empty seats, but things were even worse behind the scenes, writes Jonathan Karl. The president feuded with advisers, shouted down objections, and ended up with a car full of sick staffers—and one who was “worried he was going to die.”