Trump lied about Harris using AI to fake image of large rally, showing his obsession with crowd size.

Former President Donald Trump has always been fixated on numbers that signify dominance, such as net worth, TV ratings, polling data, and attendance figures at his rallies. Back in 2016, Trump used the large turnout at his campaign events to challenge polls indicating Hillary Clinton’s lead. In 2017, he kickstarted his time in office by falsely asserting that his inauguration crowd surpassed Barack Obama’s. Now, Trump is once again hyper-focused on crowd size, inflating his own numbers while casting doubt on the turnout for his opponents, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, her running mate.

Trump has recently embraced a fringe conspiracy theory by suggesting that images of the crowd present at a rally for Harris and Walz in Detroit’s Metropolitan Wayne County Airport were somehow manipulated. The duo’s campaign estimated the crowd at 15,000 people, but Trump claimed the images were altered. Despite media coverage and C-SPAN broadcasting the event live, Trump insisted that the crowd was “fake” because there was no one present at the plane when they arrived. He continued to accuse Harris of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create the illusion of a massive following and labeled her a cheater.

Responding to Trump’s allegations, the Harris campaign posted a photo of the actual crowd and questioned why Trump had not campaigned in a swing state in over a week. They mocked his energy levels by comparing the immense turnout at Harris-Walz events with Trump’s recent rallies. During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump criticized the media for lauding Harris’s crowd sizes while distorting the attendance figures at his own events.

Furthermore, Trump expressed his views on Harris’s ability to draw large crowds by claiming she needed entertainers like Megan Thee Stallion to attract audiences. In contrast, he boasted about filling stadiums without the need for such gimmicks because of his vision to “make America great again.” The juxtaposition of the crowd sizes at their rallies underscored the significance of public support as a key indicator in the political landscape.

As the ongoing debate over crowd sizes intensified, comparisons between Trump’s and Harris’s rallies continued to dominate the discourse. While official estimates disputed Trump’s claims about attendance figures at his events, the competition for massive turnouts reflected the underlying sentiment of enthusiasm among their respective supporters.

Moreover, Trump’s penchant for rewriting history came to the fore when he equated the crowd at his Jan. 6, 2021, speech in D.C. to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic address in 1963. Despite factual evidence contradicting Trump’s assertion, he remained steadfast in his belief that his rally was comparable or even superior in terms of crowd size.

Overall, the fixation on crowd sizes provided insight into the political dynamics surrounding Trump, Harris, and their respective campaigns. Whether it be exaggerating numbers, refuting claims, or revising historical events, the emphasis on public support underscored the significance of perception in shaping electoral narratives.