Former President Donald Trump was widely mocked after boasting about the size of the crowd for his MAGA rally in Wildwood, New Jersey over the weekend—only to be discredited by video evidence.
Trump boasted about the size of his crowd, comparing it to a Bruce Springsteen concert. Despite Springsteen's concerts typically drawing tens of thousands of fans to stadiums, the former president claimed his rally had a larger attendance. Additionally, he asserted that Springsteen, a vocal supporter of President Joe Biden, had actually voted for him.
He said:
"I love these Saturday evenings. Is there anything better than a Trump rally? If some of these wackos came along, you know those liberals, they actually vote for me. They all vote for me."
"You know, like Bruce Springsteen. We have a much bigger crowd than Bruce Springsteen. Right?"
You can hear what Trump said in the video below.
A spokesperson for the city of Wildwood supported Trump's claim, estimating the crowd size to be between 80,000 and 100,000 based on her observations.
However, footage from the rally contradicted these claims. While Trump's supporters filled the space behind him, videos showed a noticeably sparse crowd in front of the former president. The audience dwindled further as his speech continued for over 90 minutes.
You can see the footage below.
Trump's remarks were swiftly criticized.
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."
Last month, after Trump claimed that "thousands" of his supporters were "turned away from the courthouse" where his hush money trial is being held, New York attorney Michael Popok, who was deployed to the scene by Meidas Touch, easily debunked the dubious claim.
Popok showed that the main street along the courthouse remained open to traffic, and there were only a few Trump supporters present. Trump had falsely claimed that his supporters were forced to leave the area "by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave." He falsely called it "an armed camp to keep people away."
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