Donald Trump has been making false claims that an image of thousands of people waiting at Detroit’s airport as Democrat Kamala Harris arrived for a campaign rally was fabricated using artificial intelligence. However, reporters and journalists who were present at the scene documented the crowd size as Vice President Harris arrived on Air Force Two. Harris’ campaign confirmed the photo in question was not manipulated and that 15,000 people attended the rally at the Detroit airport.
Thousands of people have been attending Harris’ campaign rallies, with 12,000 turning out in Philadelphia and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, followed by 15,000 in Glendale, Arizona. In Las Vegas, over 12,000 people were inside a university arena when admissions were halted due to people getting ill waiting outside in extreme heat. Trump continued to push his false claims about the crowd size, accusing Harris of cheating and using AI to manipulate photos to make her crowd appear bigger than it was.
Hany Farid, a digital forensics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed the photo in question and found no evidence of manipulation using AI. Despite this, Trump persisted in spreading false theories about the Harris campaign photo, maintaining that his rallies drew bigger crowds. Some of Trump’s advisers and supporters have urged him to focus his criticisms on Harris’ policies rather than questioning the size of her crowds.
During a news conference at his Florida estate, Trump falsely compared the crowd at his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. However, King’s speech drew a significantly larger crowd. The Harris campaign responded to Trump’s focus on crowd sizes by needling him on various issues and questioning why he was not holding more campaign events in swing states. The campaign noted that Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes was baseless and insinuated that if he campaigned more, he might draw larger crowds as well.
