RALEIGH — At a campaign rally here Monday, former Pres Donald Trump He was speaking to a venue in North Carolina that was about 70% full — an increasingly familiar sight over the past week.
Trump holds signature rallies for the first time entered the political scene In 2015 and for the nine years since, it has regularly drawn massive and enthusiastic crowds across the country, from urban centers to remote rural areas. icy conditions or excessive heat.
These events were so packed that thousands of people couldn’t get in and stayed outside the venue to show their support.
That seems to have changed since Trump controversial rally The one at Madison Square Garden in New York last week racist jokes about Latinos and Black Americans from a comedian and multiple speakers using inflammatory language to describe Trump’s running mate, the vice president Kamala Harris.
In Raleigh, NC Monday, the first of the day’s four rallies, there were more than a thousand empty seats and no line to get in.
At his second rally in Reading, the arena was half full before Trump began his speech. His address was later pushed back an hour.
Similar scenes took place last week.
On Sunday in Macon, USA, Trump did not fill the venue where he spoke, and attendees walked out of his entire speech.
Its events are in Kingston, NC and Lititz, Pa. Sunday also drew only a few thousand people.
There were some areas where it still drew large crowds, including a Rally in Milwaukee The Fiserv Forum looked packed Friday night. Trump referenced that rally during a speech in Raleigh on Monday, estimating the crowd inside at 28,000. The maximum capacity 18,000 for this location. “We could fill that arena three times, maybe four times over,” Trump said.
And on Saturday night, he couldn’t get anywhere close to filling it Greensboro Arena ordered by his team – they closed the entire upper deck and there were about three empty sections behind the lower bowl.
On Saturday morning in Gastonia, NC — about a half hour outside of downtown Charlotte — it also drew only a few thousand supporters.
At a number of rallies, crowds began to thin out while Trump was still speaking — something he has advocated in the past, including on Sept. 10 Argument with Harris. “People don’t leave my rallies. “We have the biggest rallies in the history of politics, the most incredible rallies.”
Asked to comment on the smaller crowd sizes, Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said, “NBC News is deplorable and will write anything to discredit the massive, diverse political movement that President Trump has built.”
Trump has long focused on the size of his crowds, often grossly inflating the numbers. One of the most notable examples was when then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer angrily pushed back on accurate reports. fewer people attended his inauguration more than his predecessor Barack Obama.
“It was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, both in person and around the world,” Spicer said.
More recently, Trump inaccurately claimed in August that at his Jan. 6, 2021, pre-riot rally at the US Capitol attracted more participants More than Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall. “We actually had more people,” Trump said.
The crowd was estimated for Trump’s speech to be about 53,000, according to a House committee investigating the riots. It was estimated that the King’s crowd was around five times that amount.
Harris’ campaign said about 75,000 people attended his speech last week at the same venue as Trump’s Jan. 6 speech. Trump claimed he was people bus to his speech “because they could not show anyone to him”.
The former president also repeatedly questioned the size of the crowds Harris drew, accused him of paying off attendees and, in another instance, claimed his campaign was rigged. using artificial intelligence to make his crowd look bigger than it really is.
Harris decided to needle him as much as he could in the crowd. When he was interrupted by pro-Trump protesters at a Wisconsin rally last month, he told them to “go to the little rally down the street.” Her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, also got in on the joke. “It’s like nobody cares about the size of the crowd or anything,” Walz joked as he wowed a large audience at a rally in Phoenix in August.
If Trump has seen a smaller audience lately, he did not admit it publicly.
“Every rally is full. You don’t have empty seats,” Trump said Saturday in Greensboro, despite the number of empty seats in the arena.
The smaller crowd sizes, with less enthusiastic turnouts so close to Election Day, surprised some Republicans, but it’s unclear what the cause or significance of that was, or whether it was evidence of less momentum for his campaign.
Possible reasons include his frequent presence in some areas — he appeared at the same Greensboro arena two weeks ago and spoke to a larger crowd — and people who already voted early may not need to go to the rally.
Vaughn Hillyard and Jake Traylor reported from Raleigh, North Carolina. Dareh Gregorian reported from New York.