“Did anyone notice that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was no one on the plane and she piloted it using artificial intelligence and showed a huge ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
“It was flagged by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake image of the crowd. But there was no one there, which was later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror-like surface of the Vice President’s plane.”
“She is a FRAUD. She didn’t make ANYONE wait and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! The same thing happens with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches. That’s how Democrats win elections, by CHEATING – and they’re even worse at the ballot box.”
“She should be disqualified because creating a false image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does something like that is cheating on EVERYTHING!”
You can see Trump’s post below.
@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial
In a subsequent post, Trump shared a photo of the crowd at Harris’ rally and made the following accusation:
“See, we caught them with the wrong ‘crowd’. There was no one there!”
You can see his post below.
@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial
Trump thus repeated the claims of conservative commentator Chuck Callesto, who had previously attracted attention by spreading lies about the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. He claimed that various publicly available videos from January 6 had been “censored.”
Harris’ campaign team subsequently conducted the following fact check in a post on X (formerly Twitter) via its Kamala HQ account:
“1) This is a real photograph of a crowd of 15,000 at Harris-Walz in Michigan.”
“2) Trump still hasn’t campaigned in a swing state in over a week…Low energy?”
You can see the campaign post below.
Video footage also supports the Harris campaign and underscores Trump’s denial.
Liberal activist Ed Krassenstein, for example, said Trump’s claim was “the most ridiculous, insane, crazy thing I’ve heard in a long time.” In response, he “put together a video that contains 13 different videos and photos of the exact same event,” all “from multiple mainstream media outlets and multiple independent photographers.”
Another poster shared a similar video of evidence with the following message addressed to Trump and his supporters:
“I stitched together several videos from different angles, including footage from media outlets and random videos taken by participants. I did this to show these stubborn MAGAs that they still believe it is generated by artificial intelligence.”
Many joined Harris’ campaign and mocked Trump.
Trump’s false claim came just days after he talked incessantly about the size of the crowd during a sprawling press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate, answering reporters’ questions with his trademark lies and distortions.
When asked if he was bothered by the size of the crowds that attended Harris’ campaign rallies in Philadelphia and Detroit, Trump responded by attacking the press, insisting that Harris had barely attended more than 2,000 people at those events:
“The press is so dishonest, and here’s a great example. I had 25,000 people in Michigan recently. 25,000 people and we couldn’t get them in. In Harrisburg, we had 25,000 people and 20,000 people couldn’t get in. We had so many. Nobody ever mentions that.”
“If she has 1,500 people – and I saw it on ABC yesterday when they said the crowd was that big – I have a crowd 10, 20, 30 times that big, and they never say the crowd was big. That’s why I always say, ‘Turn around,’ and I’m so glad you asked that.”
“It’s so terrible when you say she had 1,500 people, 1,000 people, and they talk about the enthusiasm. Let me tell you, we have the enthusiasm. The Republican Party – and me as a candidate – but the Republican Party has the enthusiasm. Because people want crime to stop, they want to see a country that is respected.”
Trump later claimed that the crowd that turned out to hear him on January 6 was the largest he had ever spoken to, comparing it to the crowd that gathered for the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
He claimed: “They said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people, and if you look at the exact same picture – and everything is the same, because it was the fountains, the whole thing, all the way back from Lincoln to Washington – and you look at it, you see the picture of his people, my people, we actually had more people.”
The Harris campaign later criticized him for these statements, noting that he had “not campaigned all week” and “will not be running in a single swing state this week.” The campaign added that “facts related to Donald Trump’s collapse at Mar-a-Lago this afternoon have been difficult to track and even more difficult to find.”
The campaign said there were 12,000 and 15,000 people in attendance at the respective events in Wisconsin and Michigan, not 2,000 as Trump claimed. It added that the upcoming presidential debate on ABC News is scheduled for September 10, not September 25 as Trump previously claimed.
It also pointed out that people have spoken to larger crowds than Donald Trump, namely Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and those who have attended events like Lollapalooza, Coachella and the World Cup. In addition, the campaign criticized Trump for comparing the crowds on January 6 to those at King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and that the riot that left five police officers dead was clearly not a “peaceful transition of power.”
