NY Times Torpedoes Trump Crowd Size Complaints With Deep Study Of Trump And Kamala Harris Rallies

The New York Times torpedoed former President Donald Trump’s claims that his rally crowds are much bigger than Vice President Kamala Harris’s, and that people aren’t walking out of his events midway through.

Trump has long been obsessed with crowd size, but that fixation has deepened as Harris has become a bigger draw than her predecessor in the presidential race, President Joe Biden.

The subject has become even more sensitive since it became the topic of a penis-related joke at the DNC, and Trump has taken to lashing out with claims about his crowds and excuses about the empty seats, as well as denying that people are leaving his rallies early.

The NY Times decided to put Trump’s claim to the test, and assigned seven reporters — Malika Khurana, Kalina Borkiewicz, Elena Shao, Bora Erden, Ashley Wu, Oscar Durand, and Bedel Saget — to study half a dozen of each candidate’s rallies.

The piece is entitled “Trump Claims Harris’s Rallies Are Smaller. We Counted.”

And count they did:

The sizable support Vice President Kamala Harris has generated at her rallies has rattled former President Donald J. Trump, who has emphasized, and frequently exaggerated, his crowd sizes for years. He has said, often repeating falsehoods, that his crowds are much larger than Ms. Harris’s, and the Harris campaign has returned with their own jabs about the enthusiasm of Trump rallygoers.

We attended six rallies — every campaign event that the candidates held within a three-week period in August — across six states, taking photographs and capturing video and 360-degree footage, to analyze which claims on crowd sizes hold weight. The analysis found that, despite Mr. Trump’s claims, both candidates draw comparably big audiences.

The paper also provided photographic evidence “that people did leave early from two of three of Mr. Trump’s events, including while he was delivering his speech.”

For both rallies, they provided time-stamped photos of crowds thinning ot while Trump spoke.

Read their full report here.

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