‘She cheated!’: Donald Trump rages over images of Kamala Harris’s rally crowd
Donald Trump has claimed the crowd at a rally held by his opponent, Kamala Harris, did “not exist” in his latest social media tirade.
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Donald Trump has claimed the crowd at a rally held by his opponent, Kamala Harris, did “not exist”, adding that she “cheated” and should be “disqualified” from the upcoming election.
The rally in question happened in Detroit, Michigan, on August 7. Ms Harris and her chosen nominee for the vice presidency, Tim Walz, disembarked the Vice President’s plane, Air Force Two, and then spoke to an audience in a hangar in Romulus, a suburb of the city.
Mr Trump appears to have picked up on an internet theory which claims images of the event and also, somehow, video footage, faked the crowd using artificial intelligence.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Mr Trump asked on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday, US time.
“There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘AI’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!
“She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane.
“She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.
“She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”
“We caught her with a fake ‘crowd’. There was nobody there!” he said in a subsequent post, accompanied by an image that did appear to have been generated by AI.
Ms Harris’s speech to the crowd was broadcast live on several TV networks, and images taken by media photographers confirm there was, in fact, a real audience.
Local news stations estimated there were about 15,000 people in attendance, enough to spill over from the hangar onto the tarmac.
“These are not conspiratorial rantings from the deepest recesses of the internet,” David Plouffe, a Harris campaign adviser, wrote on Twitter.
“The author could have the nuclear codes and be responsible for decisions that will affect us all for decades.”
With more than a hint of sarcasm, a Harris campaign spokesman, Ammar Moussa, said: “Donald Trump is definitely not mad. Do not say Donald Trump is mad.”
Fixation on crowd size
At a press conference last week, held at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump repeatedly fixated on the size of his rally crowds, and expressed annoyance at the press for reporting on the relatively large crowds being drawn by Ms Harris.
“I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. No one has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” he said.
“If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech. And you look at ours. Same real estate, same everything. Same number of people, if not we had more. And they said he had a million people, I had 25,000.
“You look at the pictures of his crowd, my crowd, we actually had more people.”
Mr Trump was specifically talking about his crowd at the “Stop the Steal” rally, held at the Ellipse in front of the White House just before the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.
Estimates put that gathering at about 10,000 people. There were an estimated 250,000 people for Dr King’s famous speech in 1963, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Mr Walz, the Governor of Minnesota, unleashed a jab at Mr Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes at another rally in Arizona on August 8.
“But Arizona, you just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” Mr Walz said, poking at the crowd for rivalling the one in Michigan.
“It’s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything.”
During his press conference on Thursday, Mr Trump was asked whether the size of his opponent’s audiences made him concerned.
“Listen, I had 107,000 people in New Jersey. You didn’t report it,” he said.
“I’m so glad you asked. What did she have yesterday, 2000 people? If I ever had 2000 people, you’d say my campaign is finished.”
For what it’s worth, media estimates put the New Jersey rally in question at about 60,000 people – about half of Mr Trump’s claimed crowd size, but still an unusually large audience for a political rally.
Originally published as ‘She cheated!’: Donald Trump rages over images of Kamala Harris’s rally crowd
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