OAN correspondent attacks Tulsa fire marshal: “The full half of that arena was packed”
Tulsa Fire Department said just under 6,200 people attended Trump's rally in an arena that sits 19,000 people
Published
Citation From June 23, 2020, programming on One America News Network
JENNIFER FRANCO (HOST): President Trump continues to rail against the idea of widespread mail-in voting. For the latest, we go live to our Chief White House correspondent Chanel Rion. Hi Chanel. So President Trump is not letting up on his fight to stop mail-in ballots. What's behind his hesitancy on this? What's he saying this time around?
CHANEL RION (OAN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT): Well Jen, there are several factors here that are driving this concern. This has been a concern President Trump has been railing about for at least the last two years. But, several points: You've got the manipulated system on the left, this is an inherent mistrust of the system that the president holds; he's been railing about it for months. And the manipulation of the system includes sending in mail-in ballots, sending double ballots to the same address, things like that, things of that nature. There's a great concern about that.
Another factor that's a great concern are the national polling data that seem to be replaying what happened back in 2016, and that is, it was painting a very different picture from what was being actually played out on the ground.
Another fear that the president seems to be encompassing is this idea that the Democrats at several government levels -- you know, state, local, federal -- might end up using COVID-19 as an excuse to cheat, as an excuse to say, oh look, we've got to put mail-in ballots for the entire state for all of our voters. And the White House has long viewed mail-in ballots as a huge opportunity for cheating in the voting system and President Trump said so this morning
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I want to go back, Jen, to this very -- this item that's on the forefront of the campaign and the Trump White House. And that is a system that is manipulated not only by the left but by press and by those who are pushing a specific agenda. For example, the rally that we just attended back in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The fire marshal in Tulsa is going around telling the press that only 6,200 people attendees were actually inside BOK Arena, when the reality that -- there is a mathematical certainty, we were eyewitnesses down there, the full half of that arena was packed. And that had at least a 10,000 capacity for attendees. And so when you look at an example like a rally and how the left is manipulating the numbers just to portray the campaign in a bad light, they're have a field day with something like mail-in ballots.
And that's kind of the approach and the fear from which the campaign and the White House is taking mail-in ballots going into November 2020.
FRANCO: Well Chanel, I want to talk about the confidence levels of the campaign and the White House on President Trump's reelection chances as we approach Novemer. Why are most national polls that we've seen come out recently at least placing the president behind Joe Biden?
RION: Well, Jen, that's also perspective question that the campaign is framing.
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The campaign views these national polling numbers as 2016 2.0. Remember, back in 2016, I'll point to you just to some numbers just as an example. Back in 2016, around -- between June and November, 261 national polls placed President Trump as trailing Hillary Clinton. Only 6% of those polls even gave President Trump a shot -- 16 polls out of 261 national polls, just for perspective. And President Trump ultimately won the presidency in a landslide.