“Pockets” of the crowd who attended Donald Trump‘s rally at Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion on Monday left as the former president was delivering his address, according to a local journalist.
Footage posted on X (formerly Twitter) by Greg Bluestein, a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, showed significant numbers of empty seats early in Trump’s speech at the 8,600-capacity venue, with an entire top tier appearing nearly empty. Bluestein later posted a longer video at roughly the “hour-mark” of Trump’s address, which showed the number of attendees in some seating sections had further thinned out.
Georgia, which Trump won in 2016 but lost to President Joe Biden in 2020, is one of the key swing states that may end up determining the 2024 presidential election. Recent polling indicates the race remains razor tight, with an analysis of recent surveys published on Monday by election website FiveThirtyEight giving Trump a 54 percent chance of victory, against 46 percent for Harris.
On Monday, around 40 minutes into Trump’s Georgia address, Bluestein shared an 11-second video from the arena showing substantial clusters of empty seats. He wrote: “Pockets of the crowd at Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion start to leave as Donald Trump’s speech continues.”
Around 20 minutes later, he shared a longer 22-second clip which showed the crowd was noticeably thinner in certain parts of the stadium, commenting: “We’ve reached the roughly hour-mark of Trump’s speech.”
Newsweek contacted the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris presidential election campaigns for comment on Tuesday by email outside of regular office hours.
The empty seats at Trump’s rally sparked some mockery on social media, with Democratic Party social media activist Harry Sisson writing: “YIKES! Trump’s rally in Georgia is practically EMPTY! The whole top section is blocked off and people have left the stands. Not a good look a week out from the election!”
Political commentator Peter Henlein, who has 34,000 X followers, shared one of Bluestein’s clips, adding: “I don’t think crowd size means too much at this point, but this is a terrible crowd size for Trump in Atlanta…..which unlike MSG is in a state that actually matters.”
However, Abigail Needham, a Trump supporter from Tennessee, shared a 50-second clip of the event on X and said: “I went to a Trump rally tonight in Atlanta, Georgia. It was great! So electrifying!”
Donald Trump at McCamish Pavilion on October 28, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. Some attendees left as the Republican nominee was giving his address, according to a local journalist.
Anna Moneymaker/GETTY
In his address, the Republican nominee branded Harris a “low-IQ individual” and a “radical left Marxist.” He said: “The United States is an occupied country, but it will soon be an occupied country no longer.”
Trump hit out at critics who accused him of fascist or Nazi sympathies, commenting: “They say: ‘He’s Hitler.’ They say: ‘He’s a Nazi.’ I’m the opposite of a Nazi.
“How can Kamala Harris lead America when she hates Americans?…They’re very bad people who are a threat to democracy.”
On October 22, The Atlantic published an article by its editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg alleging Trump had expressed admiration for the loyalty of Adolf Hitler’s generals, a claim the report said was backed up by the Republican’s former White House chief-of-staff John Kelly. Speaking to Newsweek, Trump campaign advisor Alex Pfeiffer said: “This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this.”
Earlier on Monday, Trump addressed the National Faith Advisory Board in Powder Springs, Georgia, where he said “religion is under threat” in America.
According to data from the University of Florida’s election lab, as of October 28, 3,050,666 people had voted early in Georgia, in person or via mail ballots. There are 16 Electoral College votes up for grabs in Georgia this year.
Trump held a major rally on Sunday at New York’s iconic Madison Square Gardens, where he spoke for over an hour and repeated his claim that money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been diverted to support illegal immigrants, an allegation denied by the agency.
During the event, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe sparked fury after calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” In a statement, Trump campaign advisor Danielle Alvarez said: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
