After former President Donald Trump spent an hour answering reporters' questions with his typical lies and distortions, Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign issued an epically snarky fact-check.
Trump was clearly exasperated while taking questions from reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate immediately after a reporter asked him if he was bothered by the size of the crowds that attended a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday and another in Detroit on Wednesday.
Harris’s campaign said that 14,000 people attended the Philadelphia event while 15,000 attended the Detroit one—and Trump clearly wasn't happy to hear it.
Trump sighed, rolled his eyes, and said:
“Oh, give me a break. Listen, I had 107,000 people in New Jersey, you didn’t report it. I’m so glad you asked. What did she have yesterday, 2,000 people?”
"It's so dishonest, the press, and here's a great example. I had in Michigan recently 25,000 people. 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."
"When she gets 1,500 people—and I saw it yesterday on ABC when they said the crowd was so big—I have 10 times, 20 times, 30 times the crowd size and they never say the crowd was big. That's why I'm always saying, 'Turn around,' and let me tell you, 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 wanna see crime stopped, they wanna see a country that’s respected.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
During the press conference, Trump later claimed that the crowd that came to hear him speak on January 6, 2021—just before his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on the false premise the election had been stolen—was the largest he had ever addressed, drawing a comparison to the crowd that gathered for the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
He said:
"You never see the picture of the crowd. The biggest crowds I've ever spoken, I've spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody's spoken to crowds bigger than me."
"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 but I had 25,000 people and when you look at the exact same picture—and everything's the same because it was the fountains, the whole thing all the way back from Lincoln to Washington—and you look at it, you look at the picture of his crowd, my crowd, we actually had more people."
"They said I had 25,000 and he had a million people and I'm okay with it because I like Dr. Martin Luther King."
You can hear what Trump said in the video below.
Trump's rambling remarks soon attracted the Harris-Walz campaign's attention, prompting them to issue a statement titled, "Donald Trump's Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference" that was captioned:
"Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs Whatever the Hell That Was"
It reads:
"Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host apress conferencepublic meltdown. We have a lot to say about it. Here are some initial thoughts — with more to come."
"He hasn't campaigned all week. He isn't going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds. The facts were hard to track and harder to find in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago meltdown this afternoon."
"He lied. He attacked the media. He made excuses for why he's off the campaign trail. We're here to help because his staff clearly isn't."
The statement continued:
"But first, an important an important reminder on the question Donald didn't answer: how he will vote on the Florida abortion referendum. (He has been ducking this question since April.) We worked to pin down reality so Donald Trump, bless his heart, doesn't have to."
The campaign said it had 12,000 and 15,000 people at its respective events in Wisconsin and Michigan, not 2,000 as Trump claimed. It added that the upcoming presidential debate on ABC News is scheduled on September 10, not September 25, as Trump previously claimed.
It also noted that people have spoken to bigger crowds than Donald Trump has, namely Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and anyone who has attended events like Lollapalooza, Coachella, and The World Cup. Moreover, the press release criticized Trump for comparing the crowds on January 6 to the crowds at King's "I Have a Dream Speech" and that the insurrection, where five police officers died, was obviously not a "peaceful transfer of power."
The campaign admonished Trump for saying he would not be campaigning because of the Democratic National Convention even though that isn't scheduled for this week. He is also being "outspent" on the airwaves given the Harris-Walz campaign's hefty war chest. It also took him to task for his connections to Project 2025 and his antisemitic claim that Jewish people "should have their head examined."
It went further, noting his utter lack of coherent policy:
"Trump does not know know the difference between asylum seekers and an insane asylum. Donald Trump does not 'cherish' the Constitution. Abortion is not 'less of an issue' for voters. It is not 'subdued.' It is not a 'small issue for voters' despite how much Donald Trump wants it to be."
"Donald Trump did not answer the abortion question 'very well in the debate.' Everybody did not want Roe v. Wade overturned. The American people do not support states banning abortion. After-birth abortion does not exist."
And it went further:
"Donald Trump doesn't know what progressive means. Kamala Harris does not want to take away everyone's guns. Tim Walz is a gun owner. Vice President Harris does not support an arms embargo on Israel."
"Donald Trump could not remember Tim Walz's name. Donald Trump's tax cuts are not the biggest in history. We don't know what 'the transgender became such a big thing' is supposed to mean. Donald Trump will cut Social Security — just like he proposed every year he was in office."
"Government was not weaponized against Trump and Steve Bannon. Mail ballots are secure. We agree — Elon [Musk] IS a different kind of guy."
Then it concluded:
"There are no polls that say Donald Trump is going to win in a landslide. The MAGA base is not 75% of the country."
You can see the statement below.
Harris For President
Harris For President
Harris For President
Harris For President
The snarky release was an immediate hit—and many joined the Harris-Walz campaign in mocking Trump's behavior.
Trump's preoccupation with crowd size has garnered him significant ridicule, perhaps most infamously after he quibbled over the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration in 2017.
Trump—often through embattled former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer—openly disputed reports about the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration ever since the National Park Service (NPS) retweeted a post contrasting the crowd size at Trump's inauguration with the much larger crowd at former President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration.
A report released in June of that year by the Inspector General for the Department of the Interior concluded that NPS officials did not alter records of crowd sizes at the inauguration ceremony and that all witnesses that were interviewed denied that staff had been instructed "to alter records for the inauguration or to remove crowd size information."
