Donald Trump: Supporters attend Tulsa rally despite coronavirus fears
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US President Donald Trump has begun addressing supporters at his first campaign rally since March, when the US coronavirus lockdown began.
Earlier, organisers cancelled an “overflow” event at Tulsa’s 19,000-seat Bank of Oklahoma Center when the expected crowds failed to materialise.
There are concerns the event could increase the spread of Covid-19.
Those attending must sign a waiver protecting the Trump campaign from responsibility for any illness.
Hours before the rally, the campaign said six staff members involved in organising it had tested positive.
On Friday, Oklahoma’s supreme court rejected a lawsuit asking that social distancing guidelines be followed.
The Trump campaign said attendees would have to pass temperature checks before being allowed into the venue – and that they would be offered face masks.
More than 2.2 million cases of Covid-19 and 119,000 associated deaths have been reported in the US, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Mr Trump’s re-election campaign rally is one of the biggest indoor gatherings in the US since the country’s Covid-19 outbreak began.
The Trump campaign said it had received more than a million ticket requests, and that the president would speak inside the BOK Center and at an outdoor stage set up nearby for overflow crowds. When the numbers failed to appear, campaign officials cancelled the outdoor appearance, blaming “radical protesters” and the media for attempting to “frighten off” supporters.
In his opening remarks, Mr Trump said there had been “very bad people outside, they were doing bad things”, but did not elaborate.
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AFP
Attendees signed a waiver protecting the Trump campaign from responsibility for any illness
Supporters began queuing earlier this week for a chance to get into the arena, and 100,000 people or more were expected to gather in central Tulsa.
This week the number of new cases of Covid-19 in Oklahoma has been rising and local health officials fear the rally could become a “super spreader” event.
In a Facebook post, Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum acknowledged that Tulsa’s residents were divided over it being the first city to host such an event.
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Reuters
People had to pass temperature checks before they could enter the venue
“We do this as our positive Covid-19 cases are rising, but while our hospital capacity remains strong. Some think it is great, some think it is reckless. Regardless of where each of us falls on that spectrum, we will go through it as a community,” he wrote.
Political rallies are a source of inspiration as well as invigoration for Donald Trump. He draws energy from arenas filled with enthusiastic supporters, and uses their responses to the various riffs in his sometimes long, free-form speeches to sense what issues resonate with his loyal base.
For more than three months, as Covid-19 has spread across the US, the president has had to do without these emotional and strategic sounding boards. Now, the rallies are coming back, even though cases of the virus are reaching new record peaks in many states and public health officials continue to warn of the dangers of large gatherings.
With less than five months until election day, the president is billing this as the beginning of his re-election bid. Given that he held his official campaign kick-off in Orlando almost exactly a year ago, it perhaps is better seen as a re-boot of a campaign that has struggled to gain its footing as the nation has been beset by the pandemic and mass demonstrations against institutional racism and excessive force by police.
The president is now billing his campaign around the slogan “the Great American Comeback”. Given the recent turmoil, and Mr Trump’s sagging poll numbers, he is clearly hoping the Tulsa rally is the beginning of his own political revival.
There were also concerns among officials in Tulsa that there would be clashes between supporters and opponents of the president, but no serious trouble was reported.
Emotions are still running high following the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by police in Minneapolis last month, which sparked widespread anti-racism protests.
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Tulsa police removed a protester from near the location of the rally
Mayor Bynum declared on Thursday a curfew covering the area around the BOK Center, citing the risk of “civil unrest”. But on Friday, Mr Trump announced that the curfew had been lifted for “our many supporters”.
He also warned: “Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!”
Mr Trump had initially planned to hold the rally on Friday. But he changed the date last week after learning it fell on 19 June, known as Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in the US.
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The choice of location is also controversial. In 1921, Tulsa was the scene of a race riot in which white mobs attacked black people and businesses.
At a peaceful Juneteenth rally in Tulsa on Friday, the civil rights activist Al Sharpton said campaigners could “Make America Great” for everybody for the first time.
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