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SFGATE: Trump comeback rally features empty seats, staff infections

Trump comeback rally features empty seats, staff infections
Published on June 21, 2020 at 05:37AM by By KEVIN FREKING and JONATHAN LEMIRE, Associated Press

TULSA, Okla. (AP) —

President Donald Trump pressed ahead Saturday with a comeback rally amid an pandemic by declaring “the silent majority is stronger than ever before," but what was meant to be a show of political force was instead met with thousands of empty seats and new coronavirus cases on his campaign staff.

Ignoring health warnings, Trump scheduled the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was intended to be the largest indoor gathering in the world during the outbreak that has killed more than 120,000 Americans, put 40 million more out of work and upended Trump's reelection bid. But in the hours before the event, crowds seemed significantly lighter than expected. Campaign officials scrapped plans for Trump to first address an overflow space.

Trump tried to explain away the crowd size, blaming it on the media for declaring “don't go, don't come, don't do anything" while insisting there were protesters outside “doing bad things," though the small crowds of prerally demonstrators were largely peaceful.

“We begin our campaign," Trump thundered. “The silent majority is stronger than ever before."

But huge swaths of empty seats remained in the downtown arena before Trump was to take the stage. And that came on the heels of the campaign revealing that six staff members who were helping set up for the event had tested positive for the virus. Campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said that “quarantine procedures were immediately implemented,” and that neither the affected staffers nor anyone who was in immediate contact with them would attend the event.

News of the infections came just a short time before Trump departed for Oklahoma, and the president raged to aides that it was made public, according to two White House and campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t...

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