Carlos Osorio
Photos and videos showed the massive gathering of supporters at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, Michigan.
Julia Nikhinson
A rally video posted on X first zoomed in on Harris and her vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz as they descended the stairs of Air Force Two, before zooming out to show the crowd of supporters in the airport hangar.
Watch the zoom out. This is real. pic.twitter.com/t1zix5nBEC
— Democracy’s Anger Translator (@LostMyDisguise) August 11, 2024
The Harris-Walz campaign told CNBC that the photo of the crowd was “an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan.”
Their rallies have attracted large crowds across the country. The Friday rally in Glendale, Arizona, also saw more than 15,000 attendees, according to The Guardian.
Julia Nikhinson
David Plouffe, Harris’ senior campaign advisor, slammed Trump on X, writing: “These are not conspiratorial rantings from the deepest recesses of the internet. The author could have the nuclear codes and be responsible for decisions that will affect us all for decades.”
Walz also mocked Trump in a Friday rally in Glendale, saying: “You know, it’s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything.”
Trump has been known to care a great deal about crowd sizes.
On Thursday, he said that he drew a bigger crowd on January 6 than Martin Luther King Jr. did in 1963.
To be sure, people have been turning up for Trump rallies. But a video posted by conservative network RSBN showed that Trump’s rally in Bozeman, Montana on Friday looked a little empty.
Though Trump was not speaking at the time, the video did pan to show the audience, and also captured a shot of a large section of the venue where there were rows of empty seats.
Pro-Trump YouTube channel RSBN steps on a massive rake when they show the crowd at Trump’s rally. pic.twitter.com/htc5hBRgQR
— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) August 10, 2024
The former president has also not been historically averse to using AI for his campaigning efforts.
In a podcast released on June 14 with controversial social-media influencer Logan Paul, he said that someone in his team rewrote his speech with the use of AI.
“He goes click, click, click, and 15 seconds later he showed me my speech, written so beautifully,” he said to Paul. “I said, I’m going to use this sucker.”
Representatives for Trump and Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.