In a recent social media post, former President Donald Trump made an unfounded claim that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign used artificial intelligence to doctor a photo depicting crowd size at a Michigan rally. The event in question took place at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport on August 7, and the image shows a large group of people waiting for Harris to speak.
A member of Harris’ campaign team clarified to ABC News that the photograph was taken by a campaign staffer using an iPhone 12 Pro, and assured that it had not been tampered with by any form of AI.
“The photo in question was taken by a staffer on their iPhone 12 Pro at 6:28 PM on August 7, during the rally at the Detroit Airport,” the campaign official said. ABC News was able to verify the authenticity of the image and its metadata, which matched the timing of the event.
Harris’ Rally in Detroit
Harris’ appearance in Detroit marked her third event in a series of battleground state stops since Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota joined her campaign. The Harris campaign announced that the event drew an impressive crowd of over 15,000 people.
In comparison, Trump’s first public appearance with his running mate, Senator JD Vance, saw a crowd of more than 12,000 people in Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to Trump’s campaign.
The Harris campaign reported consistent figures, noting that over 10,000 supporters attended each stop during the battleground state blitz.
In reaction to Trump’s accusations, the Harris campaign issued several social media posts refuting his claims and criticized him for not focusing on swing states while he was busy fundraising and campaigning in the Western states over the weekend.
More Claims from Trump
Trump has a history of discussing crowd sizes at his events and has often boasted about drawing the largest crowds. During a news conference last week, he emphatically asserted that no one has ever spoken to larger gatherings than he has.
When questioned about the size of Harris’ crowds, Trump became visibly irritated and compared her crowd sizes to his own, saying, “Oh, give me a break. I have 10 times, 20 times, 30 times the crowd size. And they never say the crowd was big. That’s why I’m always saying, turn around the cameras.”
He also took the opportunity to compare the audience for his January 6, 2021, speech in Washington, D.C. to Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington. According to Trump, his speech attracted an equal or larger audience than the estimated 200,000 people at King’s historic event, despite official estimates that the crowd for Trump’s speech was significantly smaller.
Trump continued, “I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people. If not, we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people.”
Looking ahead, Trump is scheduled to hold another rally on Wednesday at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, North Carolina, which accommodates up to 7,200 people. The next event will be in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, at Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza, with a capacity of nearly 10,000 people.
