Top line
Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the crowd that gathered to watch Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign rally at the Michigan airport was “fake,” insisting her campaign used artificial intelligence to mask the fact that “no one was there” – a claim that has been refuted by images, videos and reports from the event.
A photo taken by a Harris campaign staffer shows the crowd at Harris’ rally in Michigan.
Key data
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump claimed there was “nobody there” when Harris arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport last week and that she “CHEATED at the airport” by sharing an image of supporters greeting her plane that he said was generated by an artificial intelligence, repeating a claim that has been circulating on social media in recent days.
There is no evidence that the image shared by Trump was doctored: The Harris campaign told Forbes that the photo was taken by a campaign staffer at the rally and was not altered using artificial intelligence (the campaign also stated in a tweet that it was a “real photo”).
Trump’s broader claim that there was “nobody” at Harris’ event is also refuted by photos, videos and reports from independent news outlets: At least one local media outlet and the Associated Press estimated that about 15,000 people attended the rally, which took place in an airport hangar.
Numerous media outlets – including the Detroit Free Press, MLive, the Detroit News, AP and Getty Images – have published photos or galleries from Wednesday’s rally, showing a large crowd for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
There is also video footage from multiple angles of Harris and Walz arriving at the rally and disembarking from the plane in front of a cheering crowd, captured by NBC News and streamed by PBS and C-SPAN.
Forbes has reached out to the Trump team and the Wayne County Airport Authority for comment.
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Key quote
Trump suggested without evidence that Harris had faked crowds at other rallies as well – and baselessly accused her of election interference. “The same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches,” Trump said in the Truth Social post. “She should be disqualified because creating a false image is ELECTION INFLUENCE. Anyone who does that is cheating at EVERYTHING!”
Important background
Trump and his team have boasted about the size of his rallies and events for years. After his inauguration in 2017, Trump’s then-press secretary Sean Spicer said he had “the largest audience ever to attend an inauguration,” which PolitiFact called “completely false.” Trump recently claimed that the crowd he spoke to near the White House on January 6, 2021, rivaled the crowd that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. faced for his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. The New York Times fact-checked Trump’s claim and found it to be false: It wrote that King’s speech drew about 250,000 people, while Trump’s speech on January 6 drew an estimated 53,000. Democrats have addressed Trump’s fixation on crowds, especially since Harris has reportedly drawn larger crowds than President Joe Biden during his campaign. On Friday in Arizona, Walz praised the size of the crowd that took place in Michigan earlier in the week before smiling and saying, “It’s not like anybody cares about crowd size or anything like that,” The Washington Post reported.
tangent
Harris is catching up to Trump in recent polls ahead of what is expected to be a close election in November. A new New York Times/Siena poll from August 5-9 found Harris now leading in three key swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
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