Donald Trump’s boast about the crowd size at his Texas rally on Wednesday got promptly exposed by a C-SPAN camera showing dozens of empty seats.
Trump, 80, spoke at San Antonio’s Freeman Coliseum to support imperiled Senate candidate Ken Paxton. During a moment in his speech when he wasn’t interrupted by protesters, the audience-obsessed president couldn’t help but insist that he’d filled up the arena, despite evidence to the contrary.
“Look at this place. Every corner. They will say they spotted an empty seat,” he said, referring to the press. “You know, there are lines that are two miles long outside. They can’t get in.”
That claim could not be immediately verified.
“I tell people, ‘please, please do not leave, do not go to the bathroom, because the fake news will take a picture of two empty seats and they’ll say Trump did not fill up’—who the hell fills up an arena like this for a midterm?” he claimed.
At that moment, the camera panned across the arena’s upper section, which revealed dozens of empty seats.
Trump maintained that there were enough people to fill those seats in the arena—they were just elsewhere.
“And what they do is in the upper rows, you’ll see it, they sort of migrate downward, and they all stay [indecipherable],” he said. “We max out everything that you‘ve ever seen. There‘s never been anything like it.”
But, as the Daily Beast has noted, Trump’s rallies have generally not been the draw they used to be. Just last week, the president’s visit to deep-red Mobile, Alabama, saw empty row upon empty row in the upper deck. Local media reported that that arena, built for around 10,000 people, saw around 8,000 rallygoers.
When that fact was reported, Trump flipped out, insisting in a Truth Social post that the venue had been “MAXED OUT.”
Not only that, he argued, but his events “for very good Republican Politicians are probably more crowded than ever.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his Wednesday rally.
The Republican National Committee disputed that there were any empty seats.
“The Freeman Coliseum was jam packed with voters who are excited to support Ken Paxton and Texas Republicans on November 3. The place was roaring with excitement and energy, and any suggestion otherwise is a lazy attempt to downplay Republican enthusiasm. Even CNN admitted it was a full event,” RNC spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre said.
During it, one of the president’s supporters attacked a protester who disrupted his speech, pulling him toward the ground by his hair. Other Trump supporters stepped in to pull him away.
“Let me ask you something: Is there anything like a Trump rally?” an enthused Trump said afterward. “I don’t think so.”
