According to today’s reporting in the Washington Post:
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.
It seems that the Tulsa, Oklahoma BOK Center management had put into effect a public health safety plan, part of which led them to purchase 12,000 “Do-Not-Sit” seat stickers for Trump’s rally.
The intention was to encourage social distancing by leaving open seats between attendees.
Two days before the rally, the managers of the BOK Center had asked the Trump campaign to provide a detailed written plan outlining the “health and safety” measures it intended to use to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Working frantically on the day of the rally, event staff had affixed “Do-Not-Sit” stickers on almost every other seat in the arena...when suddenly Trump’s campaign war room rang up the arena’s event management and ordered them to stop immediately, and remove the stickers before the president’s arrival (according to a person familiar with the event who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.)
In a video clip obtained by The Washington Post, two men (which can be viewed at the top of the article here) — one in a suit and one wearing a badge and a face mask — can be seen pulling stickers off seats in a section of the arena. The Post was unclear on who those two men are.
Briefly, in the video clip, two Tulsa Police Department officers step into the camera frame (they are not wearing face masks) while casually observing the removal of stickers.
When Trump took to the stage on Saturday, the photos of the crowd show they were clustered together and attendees were not leaving empty seats between themselves.
Trump’s campaign interference with BOK arena policy was first reported Friday by Billboard Magazine. As rally preparations were underway, Trump’s campaign staff intervened with the venue manager, ASM Global, and told them to stop labeling seats in this way, Doug Thornton, executive vice president of ASM Global, told the magazine.
“They also told us that they didn’t want any signs posted saying we should social distance in the venue,” Thornton said. “The campaign went through and removed the stickers.”
A Trump campaign statement regarding the arena preparations said: “There were signs posted and we are not aware of any campaign staff asking that they be removed.”
Trump held his Tulsa rally despite opposition by Oklahoma health authorities who feared that convening a large crowd indoors could accelerate the spread of the coronavirus. Covid-19 cases in Tulsa County were spiking in the days leading up to the rally and have continued to increase since.
Director of the Tulsa Health Department, Bruce Dart, had recommended that the rally be postponed until a date deemed to be was safer for this type of indoor event.
Meanwhile, Tulsa city residents and business owners brought a lawsuit against the venue manager, ASM Global, seeking to require all attendees wear masks and adhere to social distancing guidelines from health authorities.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected that suit.
On June 13, a week before the rally, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) noted that Oklahoma was in “Phase 3” of its reopening plan and Trump’s rally “proceeding as planned is consistent with the guidance” of that plan.
Before the rally, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in an emailed statement:
“We take safety seriously, which is why we're doing temperature checks for everyone attending, and providing masks and hand sanitizer. This will be a Trump rally, which means a big, boisterous, excited crowd. We don’t recall the media shaming demonstrators about social distancing — in fact the media were cheering them on.”
As the crowd entered the arena on the day of the rally, the Trump campaign handed out “MAGA” face masks and small bottles of “Make America Great Again 2020” branded hand sanitizer.
In taking the following excerpt from the Washington Post article...
After the majority of the stickers were in place, a member of Trump’s campaign radioed staff in the event war room where arena management was monitoring preparations and told them to stop...
...it is notable that the Trump campaign has a very active, and even pro-active "war room” devoted to Trump’s re-election bid.
The fact that the campaign war room leaped into action to contravene CDC social distancing guidelines in service to the all-important photo optics of a campaign rally just amplifies the problem with this administration's handling of the pandemic.
Conversely, yesterday's Trump administration Coronavirus Task Force briefing was the first in about two months -- since it had initially been phased out.
The New York Times reporting on Friday’s task force appearance of VP Mike Pence covered it thusly:
WASHINGTON — In the past week, President Trump hosted an indoor campaign rally for thousands of cheering, unmasked supporters even as a deadly virus spread throughout the country. He began easing up on restrictions that had been in place at the White House since Washington instituted a stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus in March, and he invited the president of Poland to a day of meetings. Then, on Thursday, he flew to Wisconsin to brag about an economic recovery that he said was just around the corner.
But by Friday, it was impossible to fully ignore the fact that the pandemic the White House has for weeks insisted was winding down has done just the opposite.
The rising numbers in Texas, Florida and Arizona made that clear, as well as the reality that those are all states where the president
The depraved indifference to life held by the Trump administration, and its near-total lack of competency in the face of over 120,000 American deaths from Covid-19, continues to lurch forward entirely unabated.