Trump gripes about Harris crowd sizes, fact-checks
The former president falsely claimed Kamala Harris is using AI to make her crowds look bigger
What happened
Donald Trump on Sunday falsely claimed that his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris digitally manipulated photos of her recent Detroit rally to make the crowd, estimated at 15,000, look larger.
Who said what
"Kamala CHEATED" and "'A.I.'d'" a photo of a crowd greeting her airplane, Trump wrote in one of several Truth Social posts on the subject. "She had NOBODY waiting, and the 'crowd' looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake 'crowds' at her speeches." Trump "appeared to have fallen for a far-right conspiracy theory — one easily disproved by photos and videos captured by attendees and media," CNN said.
Trump also threatened to sue The New York Times for disputing a story he told Thursday about an emergency helicopter landing with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown in the 1990s. Brown said that never happened, and the Times suggested Trump was remembering an uneventful 2018 helicopter ride with former California Gov. Jerry Brown. But former Los Angeles city councilor Nate Holden told Politico late Friday it was him in the emergency landing with Trump, in 1990. A former Trump employee confirmed Holden's story. "Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco," Holden said. "I'm a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles."
What next?
The Harris campaign has "begun to mock" Trump for his "obsession with the large crowds" she's drawing, the Times said.
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