If the phrase liar, liar, pants on fire was a reality, Donald Trump would have burned through two tonnes of trousers and suffered third-degree burns to his crotch.
Adding to his long string of falsehoods in recent weeks (the string stretches for miles), the former President claimed that photos of the crowds at Kamala Harris’ rally in Detroit were faked with artificial intelligence.
Taking to Truth Social over the weekend, Trump reacted to viral images of the thousands-strong crowd awaiting Harris and her running mate Tim Walz’s arrival at Detroit airport. “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?”, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. “She ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
In what can only be read in the tone and cadence of a greying man yelling from his front porch, Trump went on to claim that “NOBODY WAS AT THE AIRPORT”, adding that the crowds at her other rallies were also “fake.” It goes without saying — since Trump is about as trustworthy as the tub of yogurt that’s been in my fridge since last week — that his claims that Harris’ crowd size was faked are false.
NBC News reported that some 15,000 people attended the rally, and a Getty photographer confirmed the whopping attendance to multiple outlets. Not only that, but a widely-circulated video of the Detroit turnout is now officially debunking Trump’s claims.
Sure, a still photograph is perhaps more susceptible to claims of AI intervention, but when X users share handheld footage they captured of the crowd, the case for it being staged is a little more untenable. In a now-viral clip of the Harris crowd, one X user responded to claims the rally was faked, writing that those who support Trump’s falsehood are “dying on the dumbest hill possible.”
The video shows Harris and Walz exiting a plane with scores of people in the foreground, before panning out to an even bigger crowd packed into the airport hanger. The Harris campaign even addressed Trump’s claim on social media, re-sharing his Truth Social post and writing “this is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan.”
Of course, Trump’s claims are drenched in a layer of irony that rivals Chandler Bing, since it’s him who consistently inflates his own crowd sizes. Just last week, he falsely declared that attendees at his January 6 speech outnumbered that of Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have A Dream” address (yes, seriously). So, we won’t be taking crowd estimates from Trump anytime soon.