With wildly different attendance numbers being reported by the Tulsa Fire Department -- 6,200 -- and the Trump campaign -- 12,000 -- for Saturday's rally, Mayor G.T. Bynum said Monday that the true number is likely somewhere in the middle.
"I want to put an asterisk on the fire marshal's designation, because that does not include people that were in suites in the BOK Center or staff that were there," Bynum said in an interview with KRMG Radio. "So clearly it's somewhere in between those numbers."
"I'm not a crowd guessing expert, so I'll leave it to those who are," Bynum added.
The Tulsa Fire Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but told various local and national news outlets that about 6,200 tickets were scanned. In the Tulsa World on Monday, a TFD spokesperson said that 6,200 figure doesn't include staff, media, or attendees in the arena's suites.
A Trump campaign spokesperson told Fox News that TFD's numbers were inaccurate, saying, “The fire marshal estimate is wrong against this deluge of negative scare tactics by the media because they don't want President Trump back on the campaign trail."
A spokesperson for Mayor Bynum told Public Radio Tulsa Monday evening that "Mayor [Bynum] said this morning that the fire marshal count did not include staff or suites, so it would be higher than the 6,200 count, but he trusts the TFD to have an impartial and accurate assessment.
