If there’s one thing Trump loves, it’s boasting about the crowd sizes he draws at his rallies. And if there’s one thing he hates, it’s for the media to underestimate his crowd sizes.
Trump tweeted this a few minutes ago:
The Failing and Corrupt @nytimes estimated the crowd last night at “1000 people,” when in fact it was many times that number - and the arena was rockin’. This is the way they demean and disparage. They are very dishonest people who don’t “get” me, and never did!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018
The quote that Trump is referring to from the NY Times is this one:
He worked his audience of about 1,000 into a frenzy by recalling the term he used this month during a discussion of how difficult it was to target suspected undocumented immigrants, including criminal gang members, for deportation.
And the picture they used made it look small too.
I looked for evidence that Trump’s crowd size was bigger than 1,000. In the media, I did find this from News Channel 5:
President Trump held his second public rally and third visit, drawing thousands to downtown Nashville.
Thousands of Trump supporters crowded the streets outside municipal auditorium. While the crowds were smaller than his first rally, their passion was still evident.
Marc Sallinger with WBIR suggests there were at least 2,000 people there, but admits the auditorium wasn’t full:
President Trump should be taking the stage here in Nashville soon. There's a couple thousand people, but the Nashville Civic Auditorium is not nearly filled pic.twitter.com/OdKndciiUQ
— Marc Sallinger (@MarcSallinger) May 29, 2018
Here’s a few more photos of the event:
.@realDonaldTrump This is what you get when you hang out with @VoteMarsha #EmptySeats #TrumpRally #ByeByeBlackburn pic.twitter.com/67DbdHZIJE
— Mark Brown (@Gilgamark) May 30, 2018
Rolling Stone's "Sympathy for the Devil" blaring on loudspeakers as Trump rally crowd awaits arrival of @POTUS. pic.twitter.com/vpgOP3e6qL
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 29, 2018
Ok so to be fair, it does sound like the NY Times was playing down the size of the crowd. But they weren’t that far off. There were a lot of empty seats and, as the above reporting points out, it’s definitely not as big as the last time Trump came through Nashville.
When I read Trump’s tweet, I expected a much bigger crowd size. He said it was ‘many times’ the 1,000 that the NY Times was reporting. Clearly it was only about 2x the size.
In reality Trump’s overestimation of his crowd size was worse than the NY Times’ underestimation.
UPDATE:
It appears the crowd was indeed larger than the reporting suggested. This via a New York Times correction:
We have updated the article to reflect the fire marshal’s estimate of the crowd's size. https://t.co/u3y6Aarcio pic.twitter.com/iPynTX9NWV
— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) May 30, 2018
Well 5,500 is a much bigger number than 1,000 or 2,000. I still don’t think this number qualifies as ‘many times’ the NY Times initial underestimation, as Trump suggested.
But he was indeed right that the NY Times reported the number very low.