Several Donald Trump critics have said people left one of his town hall events before it ended, amid lots of chatter about whether people leave his events early.
Crowd size has been a frequent topic in the run-up to the November election, with Kamala Harris saying folks leave Trump’s rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom” during the pair’s TV presidential debate on September 13.
Trump has repeatedly denied this, and during his town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday night, he said: “Everybody stays ’till the end.”
About his crowd size, he said: “Nobody’s ever seen a town hall like this. You know a town hall is supposed to have about 300 people, you have about 8,000 people here.”
A clip purporting to be from this same event shows a group of people walking up the stairs, through the aisle between two large banks of seated crowds.
Some have claimed this is an example of people leaving the rally, including vocal Trump critic Ron Filipkowski.
The editor-in-chief of the liberal media company MeidasTouch shared the video with the caption: “People walking out of the Trump rally again tonight (on Tuesday).”
Similarly, MeidasTouch posted the clip cropped below Trump speaking about no one leaving his rallies early.
Retired army medic Molly Ploofkins, who has often spoken out against Trump, posted the same clip with the message: “People leaving tonight’s Trump town hall early, moments after saying this doesn’t happen at his events.”
Newsweek has not been able to verify the original clip of people walking out, but, based on what Trump is saying during the snippet, it was seemingly filmed just a few minutes before he had finished speaking anyway.
The former President was talking about how he believes a second Trump presidency would be good for car manufacturing, when he said: “All you need is somebody smart at the top to say: ‘You can’t flood our market with cars, you just can’t do it’.”
It was in the middle of this sentence that the video seems to have been taken—just a few minutes before he stopped speaking and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former White House press secretary who hosted the event, urged the crowd to “show up.”
Donald Trump speaking to supporters during a town hall event at the Dort Financial Center, in Flint, Michigan. Crowd size has been a repeated topic in the run-up to this election.
AP
Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign, via email, for any response to the clip.
Trump’s team has previously told Newsweek: “Nobody is leaving our rallies, whereas Kamala needs to bus in people to her events and use curtains to cover up large sections of her rallies because they are so poorly attended.”
On this topic during the town hall, Trump said: “We do these rallies—they’re massive rallies. Everybody loves—everybody stays until the end by the way.”
He went on to add: “If I saw them leaving, I’d say: ‘Ladies and gentleman, make America great again, now get the hell out.’ Because I don’t want people leaving.”
