Tim Walz took a page out of Donald Trump\u2019s playbook at his Friday night rally with Vice President Kamala Harris: He bragged about the size of their crowds.<\/p>\n
In Philadelphia, the new Democratic ticket packed a 10,000-person arena. A similar crowd showed up in Eau Claire, Wis. \u201cOn Wednesday, the largest crowd of the campaign showed up in Detroit, Michigan,\u201d Walz boasted.<\/p>\n
Then the vice-presidential pick beamed out at the audience in suburban Phoenix \u2014 more than 15,000 people, Democrats said \u2014 and delivered the punchline with a big grin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything,\u201d Walz said.<\/p>\n
For years Trump, the GOP nominee for president, has been the one boasting about how many people he could pack into a venue. Now Democrats are eager to play the crowd game, too. With enthusiasm surging for their new presidential ticket, they have spent the week needling Trump on a topic he famously obsesses over.<\/p>\n
Trump has pushed back with tallies of his own \u2014 often inflated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve spoken to the biggest crowds,\u201d Trump said at a news conference this week. \u201cNobody\u2019s spoken to crowds bigger than me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He bragged, implausibly, that his Washington speech on Jan. 6, 2021 \u2014 just before a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol \u2014 drew more people than the famous \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech by civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n
Trump returned to the subject Friday night at his rally in Bozeman, Mont., hours after Walz made his jabs. He mocked the recent attention on Harris: \u201cThey said, \u2018Oh, she had a big crowd, oh what a crowd\u2019 \u2014 the press is talking about the crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to his own massive rallies. What about the tens of thousands of people that came to a rally in New Jersey? What about his event last year in Pickens, S. C.? (Trump claimed 82,000 people; local officials pegged a 2023 rally at about 50,000). What about the \u201cFront Row Joes\u201d who show up at every event?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have so many people,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
A Trump campaign spokeswoman also dismissed Democrats\u2019 newfound interest in large audiences. \u201cIsn\u2019t it funny how the Democrats and Fake News want to talk about crowd sizes now after they have ignored and downplayed the unprecedented and massive crowds that President Trump has been pulling for eight years,\u201d said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who suggested that Harris\u2019s use of celebrity performances at some rallies amounts to bribery.<\/p>\n
Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said Trump has been \u201crage-Truthing about our grassroots enthusiasm and melting down publicly, both online and in front of cameras\u201d while Harris and Walz hit battleground states.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald is welcome to keep doing his thing \u2014 our campaign will be putting in the work it will take to win this election,\u201d Chitika said.<\/p>\n
Trump has always treated crowd size as an all-important metric. His big 2016 rallies were an early sign of the loyal base that propelled him to the White House and a point of contrast with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump began his presidency with the false claim that more than 1 million people showed up for his inauguration; his then-press secretary Sean Spicer dug in to declare, incorrectly, that Trump drew \u201cthe largest audience to ever witness an inauguration \u2014 period \u2014 both in person and around the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Facing Joe Biden in 2020 and again in 2024, Trump loved to mock Biden for holding smaller events and his campaign delighted in sharing pictures of extra seats at Democratic gatherings. At rallies, Trump often accused the media of ignoring his crowd sizes and demanded that the cameras pan around. His supporters sometimes pointed to the scale of Trump\u2019s rallies to support their false claims that Trump actually won the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
Facing pressure this summer to drop out after a devastating debate performance in June, Biden began to point to crowd size: \u201cHow many people draw crowds like I did today?\u201d he told ABC News\u2019 George Stephanopoulos.<\/p>\n
Stephanopoulos responded: \u201cI don\u2019t think you want to play the crowd game. Donald Trump can draw big crowds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now \u2014 with Biden out of the race and Harris finding momentum \u2014 Democrats are leaning into the subject, jabbing at Trump and reveling in comparisons to the enthusiasm once generated by Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
On social media, Harris\u2019s campaign was eager to compare their big Friday night rally in Glendale, Ariz. to a recent Trump event at a smaller venue in Phoenix. The campaign also jabbed at Trump\u2019s Friday event in Bozeman. \u201cMeanwhile at @realdonaldtrump\u2019s rally \u2026,\u201d Harris\u2019s campaign wrote on X over a video clip showing empty Trump seats \u2014 ignoring the fact that Trump was set to speak later than Harris and that many people were still filtering in. The roughly 8,500-person venue in Montana was ultimately packed and rowdy.<\/p>\n
Leavitt, the Trump spokeswoman, jabbed back at the Harris team Saturday by noting that black drapes covered some seating at the arena in Arizona.<\/p>\n
In interviews, Trump supporters in Bozeman brushed off the show of force by Harris this week. Warren Armstrong, 73, blamed \u201cthe fake news\u201d when asked about Harris\u2019s crowds and said, \u201cThey make things look great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Onstage, Trump vented at the media, too. He claimed media outlets ignored the size of his New Jersey crowd \u2014 though many did cover it. \u201cThey don\u2019t talk about it because they\u2019re fake,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
In Arizona, Julie Jonuska, 63, a yoga therapist from Scottsdale, said Harris \u201chas created more excitement, for sure,\u201d gesturing around the Desert Diamond Arena where thousands of supporters still lingered while Harris and Walz worked the rope line Friday.<\/p>\n
Jonuska \u2014 who wore a button of Harris\u2019s face reading \u201csay it to my face,\u201d the line Harris deployed at her Atlanta rally daring Trump to debate her \u2014 said she believes Harris can reach an audience that Biden could not, saying that \u201cnow Trump\u2019s the old man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crowd is your everyday normal people,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s about the people, and not about one person, like Trump is the party of Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knowles reported from Bozeman, Mont. Dylan Wells in Glendale, Ariz., contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tim Walz took a page out of Donald Trump\u2019s playbook at his Friday night rally with Vice President Kamala Harris: He bragged about the size of their crowds. In Philadelphia, the new Democratic ticket packed a 10,000-person arena. A similar crowd showed up in Eau Claire, Wis. \u201cOn Wednesday, the largest crowd of the campaign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}