Former President Donald Trump has once again sparked controversy with his remarks about crowd sizes, this time targeting Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has claimed that large crowds at Harris’s recent campaign rallies are the result of artificial intelligence manipulation, a baseless assertion that has been widely debunked.
Harris, who recently launched her campaign for the presidency following Joe Biden’s exit from the race last month, has attracted significant attention at her rallies. One such event in Detroit drew an estimated 15,000 attendees. Trump, however, has alleged that these large crowds are not genuine, asserting that Harris has used “A.I.” to create what he described as a “fake crowd picture.”
Trump’s claims have been refuted by numerous photos and videos from the rallies, captured by both attendees and media outlets. These visuals clearly show the large crowds at Harris’s events, undermining Trump’s assertions. In response to the former president’s comments, the Harris campaign took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter), posting a photo of the 15,000-person crowd from the Michigan rally and criticizing Trump for being “low energy” and not campaigning in key swing states for over a week.
The debate over crowd size is not new for Trump. He has a history of disputing attendance figures, a trend that dates back to his 2018 inauguration. Trump controversially had photos from the event altered to make the crowd appear larger than it was. His focus on crowd sizes has continued into his post-presidency years, with frequent claims about the size of his rallies compared to those of other politicians.
Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, has weighed in on the issue, criticizing Trump’s focus on Harris’s crowd sizes. In an interview on Fox News, McCarthy urged Trump to shift his focus from crowd sizes to more substantive issues, saying, “You’ve got to make this race not on personalities. Stop questioning the size of her crowds, and start questioning her positions.”
Trump’s fixation on crowd size is part of a broader pattern. In 2019, he often compared the attendance at his rallies to those of his political opponents, frequently claiming his crowds were larger. This obsession with crowd size was also evident during a hospital tour in El Paso, Texas, following a mass shooting at a local Walmart, where Trump bragged about the size of his audience.
Moreover, Trump’s penchant for exaggerating crowd sizes extends to his remarks about the January 6, 2021 rally, which he falsely claimed had the same number of attendees as Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. The National Park Service estimates that King’s 1963 speech, which was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, drew around 250,000 people. In contrast, Trump’s January 6 rally, where he made unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election being “stolen,” was attended by approximately 53,000, according to the House select committee that investigated the subsequent Capitol riots.
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Trump’s continued emphasis on crowd sizes and his unfounded claims about Harris’s rallies reflect a broader trend of disputing and distorting facts to suit his narrative. As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, it remains to be seen how these tactics will influence public perception and the political discourse surrounding the election.
