Former President Donald Trump claimed his opponent Kamala Harris was faking the size of her rally and posted what he believed to be an “AI-manipulated photo” – although there is no evidence the photo was manipulated.
It is an image that emerged on Wednesday at a Harris and Walz rally at Detroit Metro Airport and shows a large crowd in front of Air Force Two, the vice president’s official aircraft.
Right-wing groups falsely claim that inconsistencies in the news photo suggest that it has been digitally manipulated – such as the lack of a reflection on the aircraft turbine.
However, the size of the crowd was easily proven by videos of the event.
Nevertheless, Trump took up the issue on Sunday, claiming on his platform Truth Social that Harris had done it with the help of artificial intelligence.
It concerns a photo of the Harris-Walz rally at Detroit Metro Airport that was circulated online on Wednesday. Right-wingers falsely claim that it was digitally manipulated. They point to the lack of a reflection on the turbines of Air Force Two.
“Did anyone notice that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” he wrote. “There was no one on the plane and she rigged it with an ‘AI’ and showed a huge ‘crowd’ of so-called supporters BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
“She is a FRAUD. She made NOBODY wait and the ‘crowd’ looks like 10,000 people!” he continued. “The same thing happens with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.”
“This is how Democrats win elections,” Trump argued. “She should be disqualified because creating a false image is ELECTION MEDICALIZATION.”
“Anyone who does this is cheating at EVERYTHING!”
Other Republicans have made similar claims, with commentator Dinesh D’Souza urging his supporters to “look at the reflection on the plane.”
“Does this look like a real picture to you?” he asked on Saturday.
Another X user also claimed: “If you look closely at the plane’s livery, you will notice that the crowd is not reflected in the livery.”
“Your following is fake. Your voters are fake. Your marriage is fake. Your political career is fake,” the X-user wrote.
Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the Harris campaign doctored a photo of the size of their crowd in Detroit, Michigan
The former president mocked his opponent on Truth Social as a “fraud”
But the size of the crowd at Harris’ rally was easily proven by watching videos of the event.
Fact-checking website Snopes also said that the Winston AI Detector determined the image was “96 percent human” – meaning it was “probably photographed by someone and not created using an AI generation tool.”
If anything, Snopes’ findings suggest that it’s possible that the lighting, shadows, or filtering (of the photo) were digitally manipulated,” but not the photo as a whole.
Spectrum News also noted: “The crowd was real, and thousands of people attended the rally, many of whom posted their own pictures and videos of the event, which was also live-streamed by dozens of news outlets and featured a number of prominent politicians.”
The report went on to say that Michigan broadcaster MLive said: “The hangar was filled with about 15,000 people, and the crowd spilled onto the tarmac.”
Getty Images photographer Andrew Harnick also defended his photo.
“It was a big crowd and the pictures I took that are on the Getty website speak to that,” he told the Daily Beast.
The false accusation comes as Vice President Kamala Harris overtakes Trump in the polls.
Harnick explained that he used a zoom lens, which could make objects appear closer than they actually were.
“The plane is actually quite far away from the crowd,” he said, pointing out that he has been covering politics for decades and shows no bias.
“We keep our opinions to ourselves and only document what we see in front of us,” Harnick said of photographers.
The Harris campaign team has now hit back because the former president had spread this baseless accusation.
“1) This is a real photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan,” the campaign posted on X.
“2) Trump still hasn’t campaigned in a swing state in over a week…Low energy?”
The Harris team criticized Trump for spreading the unfounded accusation
Trump’s claim that Harris was inflating the size of her rallies came during a bad week for the former president, in which he is gradually losing his lead in terms of voter enthusiasm and crowd sizes.
Enthusiasm for the Democrats rose rapidly after Harris took over the campaign of her 81-year-old boss.
A new poll from the New York Times and Siena College shows Harris ahead by four percentage points among likely voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the Cook Political Report has revised its ratings for Georgia, Arizona and Nevada back to “undecided” – after previously rating them as “leaning Republican.”
Another shock poll shows that more Americans trust Harris on economic issues than the former president.
Trump’s stance on economic issues remained unchanged from July to August: 41 percent of respondents were satisfied with his approach, according to a poll by the Financial Times and the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Meanwhile, Harris has a one-percentage-point lead, well within the August 1-5 poll’s margin of error of 3.1 percent.
But Harris’ 42 percent approval rating among 1,001 registered voters represents a massive 7 percentage point jump from Biden’s results last month, when he was at just 35 percent.
A new poll shows Harris rising to a position ahead of Trump in dealing with the economy, while Joe Biden repeatedly ranks behind the former president
Trump’s advisers are now begging him to give a new, “tough” campaign speech in which he portrays Harris as liberal and weak – and renounces his improvisations.
According to Axios, advisers believe the vice president will only extend her lead in the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, especially if she is not attacked by advisers first.
Republicans close to the former president say his messages need to be refocused, acknowledging that they are often complacent and rambling.
“President Trump knows he is the only one who can end the media honeymoon with Kamala Harris, and he sees a significant chance of doing so given Harris’s inability to defend her record on inflation and the border,” a source told Axios.
“However, to overcome the media power field that protects Harris, he must articulate his political differences very clearly and plans to give a tough campaign speech shortly.”
DailyMail.com has contacted the Trump team for comment.
