Fact Check: Was Trump's Jan. 6 Crowd Bigger Than for MLK's 'I Have a Dream' Speech?

Claim:

Donald Trump's speech in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, featured a larger crowd than did Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

Rating:

False ( About this rating? )

During a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Aug. 8, 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the crowd during his speech at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, was larger than the number of people who gathered for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.

However, this assertion was false. According to the available estimates and data for both events, King's crowd size at the very least doubled that of Trump's. The disparity possibly was far greater, as we detail later in this story.

Trump's Jan. 6 speech took place the same day some of his supporters breached the U.S. Capitol to protest the 2020 election results — a protest based on false claims of massive voter fraud. Both inside and outside the Capitol, his supporters engaged in a violent and deadly riot , including the assault of at least 140 law enforcement officers .

We emailed Trump's campaign to ask for evidence regarding his claim but did not receive a response within several hours.

Trump's Answer Featured False Claims About the Capitol Riot

During the news conference at Trump's club, an unidentified reporter in the room asked him about remarks he made minutes earlier, saying, "Mr. President, you just said that there was a peaceful transfer of power last time when you left office." The reporter mentioned the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and asked, "How is that peaceful transfer of power?"

During Trump's answer, he claimed, "Nobody was killed on Jan. 6." According to information previously reported by The New York Times , Fox News and FactCheck.org , among other outlets, such a statement is false.

Then, Trump said he spoke the words " peacefully and patriotically " during his speech regarding his supporters' demonstrations, omitting the fact he repeatedly and baselessly told his supporters the 2020 election would feature massive voter fraud. He also neglected to mention that he told his crowd on Jan. 6 that he would walk to the Capitol with them, then didn't. Trump told the same crowd on the Ellipse, among other similar remarks, "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Further, regarding a peaceful transfer of power, Trump failed to attend the inauguration of his successor, U.S. President Joe Biden.

Trump's answer to the reporter continued with him speaking about his supporters who participated in the Capitol riot — people who seemingly believed his false claims about massive voter fraud. Trump himself repeated those untrue claims to his supporters for months leading up to the 2020 election, before inviting those supporters for his Jan. 6 rally. He told the reporter, "I think that the people of Jan. 6 were treated very unfairly and, they were there to complain, not through me. They were there to complain about an election."

Trump's Jan. 6 Crowd Size Claims

Continuing with his answer, Trump mentioned the size of the crowd for his Jan. 6 speech:

The biggest crowd I've ever spoken to … I was in, at the Mall. I was at the Washington Monument. I was at the whole thing. I had crowds, I don't know who's ever had a bigger crowd than I had, but I had it many times. The biggest crowd I've ever spoken before was that day. And I'll tell you, it's very hard to find a picture of that crowd. You see the picture of a small number of people relatively going to the Capitol. But you never see the picture of the crowd, the biggest crowd I've ever spoken, I've spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody's spoken to crowds bigger than me.

His remark claiming that "it's very hard to find a picture of that crowd" was not entirely true. In fact, the official Trump account @TeamTrump on X posted a photo ( archived ) aiming to show a glimpse at the day's crowd size, taken before the start of his rally and showing the Washington Monument, near the site of Trump's speech on the Ellipse. The post read, "This is what Democracy looks like."

Reuters photojournalist Carlos Barria captured a wider picture of the same portion of the crowd taken at an unknown time on the day of the rally. The New York Times published a large version of the same photo.

Near the end of Trump's answer at his club, he compared his speech's crowd size to that of King's "I Have a Dream" speech. King delivered his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington. Trump told reporters:

If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate. Same everything. Same number of people, if not, we had more. And they said, "He had a million people," but I had 25,000 people. But when you look at the exact same picture, and everything's the same, because it was the fountains, the whole thing, all the way back from Lincoln to Washington. And you look at it, and you look at the picture of his crowd, my crowd, we actually had more people. They said I had 25,000 and he had a million people. And I'm ok with it because I liked Dr. Martin Luther King.

Crowd Estimates for 1963's March on Washington

The March on Washington in 1963 drew crowds estimated at more than 200,000 people. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University published the number of "more than 200,000 demonstrators." The National Park Service reported "an estimated 250,000 people" attended the march. Meanwhile, the NAACP said "the rally drew over 260,000 people from across the nation."

The Getty Images image-licensing websites hosts several historical photos showing the massive gathering on the day of King's speech.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters on Aug. 28, 1963, on the Mall in Washington. (Image courtesy Getty Images)

One photo displays a high-angle view of the crowd.

(Image courtesy Kurt Severin/Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Trump's Crowd Size Estimates for Jan. 6

As for Trump's speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, no credible estimates came close to that of King's.

The Washington Post reported Trump's crowd size simply as "thousands of supporters amassed on the Ellipse near the White House."

The New York Times reported "tens of thousands of Trump supporters" gathered in Washington for the rally. The Times also noted of Trump's remark at Mar-a-Lago in August 2024 that the House Jan. 6 committee estimated his speech drew a crowd of "approximately 53,000 supporters."

Prior to Trump's Jan. 6 speech, the pro-Trump group Women for America First requested from the National Park Service a permit for the Ellipse, including upping its estimate of rally attendees on Jan. 3 from 5,000 to 30,000. The NPS stopped publicly providing crowd estimates for gatherings around the National Mall after a controversy involving the Million Man March in 1995.

The Associated Press reported on the day after Trump's speech and the Capitol riot that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy " said law enforcement's intelligence estimates of the potential crowd size in the run-up to the protests 'were all over the board,' from a low of 2,000 to as many as 80,000."

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