Trump Goes on Unhinged Rant to Distract From His Crowd Sizes
Donald Trump has taken his size insecurity to the next level, falsely accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of using artificial intelligence to make a crowd appear bigger in photos and videos.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Michigan on Wednesday, where they were reportedly greeted by a crowd of 15,000 people. Only, Trump and his cronies are pushing the conspiracy theory that it never even happened.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday night.
Trump wrote his thoughts above a screenshotted post from conservative commentator Chuck Callesto, a font of misinformation whose faux–breaking news posts are regularly seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
Trump claimed that Harris had been outed by an airport maintenance worker and that the rumor had been “confirmed by the reflection” in the finish of the plane, which did not appear to show the crowd.
“She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING—And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box,” Trump wrote.
Trump argued that Harris should be “disqualified” for election interference, over the use of the image. “Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING,” Trump wrote.
Like many of Trump’s accusations, this conspiracy theory is actually an admission.
Ever since he lied about the crowd size at his inauguration, Trump has continued to establish himself as an unreliable source for numbers of any kind. In May, his campaign pushed the false claim that his rally in the Bronx had attracted a crowd of 25,000 people, while in reality it was more like 1,000.
One thing is for certain: Trump cares a lot about appearances. Apparently, he even has a weird habit of waving at no one as he boards his plane.
The Republican presidential nominee’s sensitivity to Harris’s groundswell of popularity comes just as his running mate, J.D. Vance, trailed Harris and Walz across the country, attracting meager crowds just miles away from Harris’s massive gatherings.
Trump’s ravings were easily answered by actual journalists and photographers who had covered the event, whose reporting revealed a sizable crowd inside a packed airplane hangar, with many rallygoers spilling out onto the tarmac.
Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley specializing in digital forensics, said he analyzed the image for evidence of A.I. generation. “While the lack of evidence of manipulation is not evidence the image is real. We find no evidence that this image is AI-generated or digitally altered,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn.
Harris’s campaign hit back at Trump on Sunday night, claiming that the image was genuine. “1) This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan,” the Harris campaign wrote in a post on X. “2) Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week.… Low energy?”
