Vice President JD Vance was widely mocked after videos and photos from a Turning Point USA event he headlined at the University of Georgia went viral for showing just how few people actually attended.
Vance appeared as part of Turning Point USA’s “This is the Turning Point Tour,” a campus speaking circuit. Erika Kirk, Turning Point USA's CEO, was due to attend but backed out at the last minute, citing security concerns she took "extremely seriously."
Vance attended as scheduled, but the venue, the Akins Ford Arena, was only about 25% full, per MS NOW's Jake Traylor, who said Turning Point USA "seems to have misestimated crowd size for Vance."
Footage showed many empty seats.
@jake__traylor/X
@jake__traylor/X
Liberal activist Ed Krassenstein also shared footage from the event, calling the crowd size "pathetic" and adding:
"MAGA is dead. This is just laughable. There are more people at the drag queen bingo nights in rural far-right Florida towns."
You can see his post below.
Vance was swiftly mocked.
While few attended, the event was most notable for the fact that a protester accused Vance of committing genocide and “killing children.” The protester spoke out when a host asked Vance about what it’s like to be caught between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV amid their escalating dispute over the Iran war.
Last week, Pope Leo criticized the war and called on the world "to reject war, especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate and is not resolving anything."
Trump later took to Truth Social in an attempt to discredit the Pope, saying he doesn't "want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon." Among other things, Trump said the Pope should "stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician."
When the protester accused Vance of "committing genocide in Gaza," Vance credited Trump with securing a Gaza peace agreement, arguing that criticism should instead be directed at former President Joe Biden and his administration, not the current one, which he claimed “solved that problem.”
When another protester said the Trump administration is "bombing children," Vance said he is proud of the Trump administration’s efforts and “humanitarian aid” in Gaza.
