"Anything that turns up the temperature and becomes controversial is where the online fundraising comes from."

"It’s a lot easier to catch fish in a hot lake than a cold lake. All these stories heat up the lake." 

Said Brad Parscale, "a former Trump campaign manager who now works in online fundraising," quoted in "Trump seethes at gag order in federal case while his campaign relishes it/The former president took advantage of a temporary pause in the restriction to resume attacking special counsel Jack Smith" (WaPo).

Trump "took advantage" of his right to speak. Noted.

"TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Trump’s campaign rally as a prank."

"After @TeamTrump tweeted asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones on June 11, K-pop fan accounts began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally — and then not show. The trend quickly spread on TikTok, where videos with millions of views instructed viewers to do the same.... 'It spread mostly through Alt TikTok — we kept it on the quiet side where people do pranks and a lot of activism,' said the YouTuber Elijah Daniel, 26, who participated in the campaign. 'K-pop Twitter and Alt TikTok have a good alliance where they spread information amongst each other very quickly. They all know the algorithms and how they can boost videos to get where they want.'...  Many users deleted their posts after 24 to 48 hours in order to conceal their plan and keep it from spreading into the mainstream internet..... Twitter users on Saturday night were quick to declare the social media campaign’s victory. 'Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok,' Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted in response to [Trump campaign chairman Brad] Parscale, who had tweeted that 'radical protestors' had 'interfered' with attendance...."

From "TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally/Did a successful prank inflate attendance expectations for President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla.?" (NYT).

So... are we going to be celebrating the tricky use of the internet to interfere with campaign events?

The article proceeds to discuss "K-pop stans." Quite aside from whether the cutesy slang "stans" belongs in a serious new report — and it is serious news even if it's news of a prank — are we talking about Americans? Or is this foreign interference in our elections?

K-pop stans have been getting increasingly involved in American politics in recent months. 

The word "American" suggests that we are talking about foreign citizens acting in very large numbers  — colluding — to harm an American political candidate — to waste the campaign's assets and to create confusion and embarrassment. Because the candidate is Trump, readers are going to be complacent. Ha ha, the kids got that guy. You have to imagine a candidate you like getting humiliated and wasting scarce assets and turning away sincerely interested event-goers.

Obviously, the campaigns themselves need to come up with ways to counteract these kinds of pranks, but I wish the mainstream journalists would do something more serious and independent than just laughing along with the kids.

"President Donald Trump's campaign manager deleted a tweet featuring a dramatic photo of Air Force One at the Daytona 500 after users pointed out that..."

"... the shot was from President George W. Bush's visit to the NASCAR race in 2004, not from Trump's visit on Sunday."

CNN reports.

I'm going to use my old tag "the Air Force 1 photo op." The "the" is confusing here. The tag was created to cover what was easily recognized at the time as the Air Force 1 photo op. Do you remember it?

Here's my one post on the subject, from May 9, 2009, linking to the CS Monitor article, "Aide resigns over Air Force One fiasco -- Biden not involved"

"Once news broke that an Air Force One jet buzzed Lower Manhattan for a photo op, do you think Obama aides checked to see where Vice President Biden was?"

Why bring up Biden like that? I have to infer that he was the butt of jokes at the time. But who remembers that now?

Anyway, what can we say about the use of Air Force One to show off the glory of the United States presidency? Whether Brad Parscale tweeted the right photograph or not is a piddling matter, but the use of the plane for visual messaging — as opposed to mere transportation — deserves some attention, and I just want the analysis to be the same whoever the President is.

It's got to be so unpleasant for anti-Trumpsters to see the man showing up at the big NASCAR event. This sort of attack must be irresistible (but I've got to assume they'd stress the charisma and unifying power of a Democratic politician who ventures into NASCAR territory):

Using the official apparatus of government for what appears to be a political event https://t.co/GWNm8io8O1

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 16, 2020

ADDED: When is the last time anybody won the presidency without winning Florida? You have to go back to Clinton in 1992 and, before that, Kennedy in 1960.

In the email today, all addressing me personally...

From Brad Parscale:

I want to make sure you heard the President’s big news that he is officially running for re-election in 2020.

I am honored and humbled that the President appointed me as his campaign manager.

But let me be clear: there’s only one patriot out there who can help win this race... YOU.

You’re all we’ve got to fight back against the fake news media and the rabid Democrats....

I don’t care how many lying books they write.

I don’t care how many witch hunts they launch....

From Donald Trump: