Former President Donald Trump was widely mocked after claiming it's "virtually impossible" to speak at his rallies for so long without anyone leaving, and he got instantly fact-checked.
In a conversation with podcaster Lex Fridman, who asked Trump about the difference between success in business and in politics, Trump implied that his ability to captivate audiences ensures that people stay engaged during his rallies.
He said:
“I have a lot of people that are in business that are successful and they’d like to go over to politics. And then you realize, they can’t speak. They choke.”
“Let’s say you’re talking about a big audience, but I get very big audiences and y’know, for many people, it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. You know, it’s not an easy thing to do and it’s an ability.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Liberal activist and MeidasTouch editor Ron Filipkowski was quick to point out how wrong Trump was, sharing a video from June showing Trump supporters leaving one of his events.
Another poster shared C-SPAN footage of Trump supporters leaving a different event while Trump was mid-speech.
And another.
The mockery was swift.
Trump's remarks hark back to his documented obsession with crowd size.
Last month, he went so far as to accuse Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign of misleading voters about attendance at her own rallies, claiming Harris used artificial intelligence to make the crowd at a rally near Detroit, Michigan, appear larger than it was.
At the time, Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social that Harris "had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people!" Trump, who is facing criminal charges for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, said Harris "should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE."
The Harris campaign later fact-checked him, noting a photo Trump claimed was altered "is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan." The campaign noted that Trump had, unlike Harris, not spent time campaigning in swing states and mocked him for being "low energy."
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