Mary Trump, the clinical psychologist and author who is former president Donald Trump’s niece, has called on Americans to flood her uncle’s campaign website with ticket requests for his 25 March rally in Waco, Texas, so tickets will be allocated to people who won’t show up for the event.
Writing on Twitter, Ms Trump wrote that the Waco location is “a ploy to remind his cult of the infamous Waco siege of 1993, where an anti-government cult battled the FBI”.
The 1993 seige of a Waco compound used by the Branch Davidian religious cult was carried out by US law enforcement between 28 February and 19 April 1993. Seventy-six cult members died on the last day of the siege when a fire broke out as FBI personnel were attempting to force the cult members from the compound with tear gas.
Over the 51 days that began when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tried to search the cult’s property, a total of four federal agents and 82 cult members — including 28 children — lost their lives.
The event became a rallying cry for anti-government extremists, including the domestic terrorists who blew up the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City two years later.
Ms Trump wrote that her uncle, who could soon be indicted in several criminal probes into his conduct, “wants the same violent chaos to rescue him from justice”.
“But we can stop him. If we book the 50,000+ venue, we can make sure most of the seats are empty when the traitor takes the stage. We can no longer fail to hold powerful men accountable for their crimes against our country,” she said.
Ms Trump shared a link to her uncle’s website and encouraged people to request tickets for the Waco event to “fill this venue with empty seats”.
If her plan succeeds, it would not be the first time one of Mr Trump’s events was disrupted in that manner.
When Mr Trump’s 2020 campaign held a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after months away from the campaign trail due to the Covid-19 pandemic, K-Pop fans on TikTok organised a campaign to request tickets they would never use, causing the rally venue to be largely empty when Mr Trump took the stage.
The then-president demoted his then-campaign manager after the embarassing turnout at the Tulsa rally.
