1. Having run big rallies in my previous life in politics there were a few big issues here...a perfect storm

First, you never, ever brag about ticket reservations ahead of an event. Not just because you'll be embarrassed if people don't show up...it also discourages attendance. https://twitter.com/davidgura/status/1274525971719258112

2. Think about it. If you intend to go to a rally for a candidate of your choice but you keep hearing that 800,000 people have reserved tickets (forget that many were fake reservations - that news didn't reach most people), would you still want to go? 800,000 for 19,000 capacity?

3. Unless you were a super, super diehard fan, the prospect of going to a rally where the candidate and his campaign manager keep touting that 800,000 people have reserved tickets sounds like a nightmare. The long lines, traffic, overcrowding...and all of that during a pandemic

4. You want people to feel like they have a chance to get a seat when you reserve a big venue. If you keep saying that you have 42-50 TIMES the number of available seats in reservations why would someone want to show up? Especially if they're older or have kids?

5. Second, the campaign made a strategic mistake holding a rally in a venue this big in a state with a smaller population when you have to overcome attendance issues due to a pandemic. He should have held this rally in a state where he had a bigger pool of supporters to pull from

6. Again, it's about overcoming attendance challenges due to corona. So if you want a rally with 19k, you shouldn't hold it in a state with just over 1 million registered GOP. You should go for a state like FL w/ 4.8 million registered GOP or TX where you have over 6 million GOP

7. With respect to Covid-19, while POTUS and some of his supporters have been dismissive (particularly in the past month) of the threat the virus poses, it still made this event so challenging because many people are being responsible...regardless of their political affiliation

8. This is especially true of older potential attendees..you combine the threat of the virus with the prospect that they'd have to wait in line (due to repeated boasting by the campaign) and you can't just do the normal stuff to draw a crowd.

9. Normally the campaign can send an email/text to supporters combined with social media support from the president & get who they need. Because they wrongly believed they had a surge in tickets, they likely didn't do the stuff you need to do when you have attendance concerns

10. Did they distribute tickets to local GOP clubs? Did they aggressively engage with the state GOP to organize attendees? Did they do contests to encourage people to attend with a prize being to meet POTUS backstage in a clutch? (with testing of course)

Likely not.

11. I would say this rally, if they insisted on holding it indoors and in OK, should have been held in a venue of 7,000-7,500 max. I am confident they could have filled that venue size. The better option would have been to hold it outdoors. They would have had many more people

12. Bottom line:

- Bragging about numbers in advance scared people off

- Coronavirus impacted numbers

- Holding a rally during a pandemic in a state w/ a very small GOP pool compared to other states

- Not doing audience building stuff because they thought they didn't need to