Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump has called his rally staff “so stupid” after they displayed the “wrong picture” to the crowd.
Speaking at his Sunday rally in Juneau, Wisconsin, Trump sought to describe the large crowd that attended his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the night before. The former president was at the same site where Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate him on July 13. Former volunteer fireman Cory Comperatore was killed by the gunman.
Trump indicated that he wanted to show the Juneau crowd pictures demonstrating the size of Saturday’s Butler rally, which he repeatedly insisted comprised 100,000 people. A KDKA-TV reporter at the rally, Jennifer Borrasso, said that as of 2:46 p.m., the U.S. Secret Service estimated that 21,000 attended. CBS News estimated that 24,000 people attended the event.
“We had over 100,000 people show up in beautiful little Butler,” Trump said at the Juneau rally the following day. “It’s little Butler but beautiful Butler, Pennsylvania. We had a crowd, and you know, this is a hell of a crowd too [crowd cheers]. I have to tell you. It’s happening all over. But we had 100,000 people, and there was love.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Newsweek has contacted the U.S. Secret Service and Pennsylvania State Police via email to ask their estimate of the crowd size in Butler but did not receive a response by the time of publication. Newsweek has also contacted Trump’s campaign via email for comment.
“And we have something to show you the kind of crowd we had last night, it was really something special, so let’s put it up if we can,” Trump told the Wisconsin crowd, turning his head to look at the screen. A video was put up showing the large Butler crowd. “That’s the wrong picture,” Trump said, turning back to the crowd.
“That was unbelievable, they used the wrong picture, it was the same picture but they had the two side things,” he said, before splaying out his arms and saying, “They’re so stupid!” prompting the crowd to laugh.
“But that’s what it, you know, we have that every once in a while, right? We have that. That seldom happens, but you got the gist of it, it was an unbelievable crowd.”
A user on X, @charles_gaba, used an aerial photograph of Saturday’s rally to measure the area occupied, and then estimated the crowd size using a standard crowd size estimation figure of one person per 4.5 square feet, amounting to a total crowd of about 20,000 people.
This means even if you assume the entire venue area is tighly-packed (the rear third clearly isn’t…it’s much less dense), that comes to around 17,800 people.
When you add the crowd on the risers & tents, I suppose it could have been up to 20,000 at the outside. 6/ pic.twitter.com/4zDPpNZfZh
— Charles Gaba ✡️ (@charles_gaba) October 6, 2024
Trump frequently mentions crowd sizes of his rallies, whether in his speeches or posts on Truth Social. During the presidential debate on September 10, Vice President Kamala Harris said that people were “leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” Trump replied, “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”
In August, he said more people attended his January 6, 2021, rally than attended Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “I Have A Dream Speech” in 1963. Trump’s 2021 crowd is estimated to have comprised about 53,000 people, while King’s was estimated at over 250,000.