‘You don’t have any seats that are empty’ : This camera man had a hilarious way of fact-checking Donald Trump’s claim

Hopefully, this cameraman retained their job for fact-checking Donald Trump on the spot at his Greensboro, North Carolina, rally.

Donald Trump came on stage to rile his supporters up. He proudly claimed that many senators were in the rally to support him. In addition to that, Trump happily announced, “You don’t have any seats that are empty.”The cameraman on the job definitely had the best comedic timing. As soon as Trump claimed that there were no empty seats, they panned the camera to large swathes of empty seats around the venue. They knew what they were doing when they zoomed in the top row of the stadium, which had lights turned off and vacant seats. It wasn’t just the top row that had no people.

The sides of the stadium had rows upon rows of unoccupied seats. There were also gaps in the denser areas where most of Trump’s supporters were. This was far from Donald Trump’s claim that the venue was full. To clarify, this shot wasn’t taken at the tail end of the rally. This was recorded an hour into the rally on livestream by NTD, meaning that the crowd has been sparse to begin with.

An obsession with crowds

Prior to his claims that the venue was full, Trump also claimed that he and his supporters had “the biggest rallies” in history. It’s a bold statement—one that claims to have outdone the Indian Farmers Protest and the Black Lives Matter 2020 protests. Nevertheless, the camera has proven Trump wrong about his assertion.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that his crowd sizes are larger in contrast to Harris’. By logic, this would mean that the race isn’t as close as the polls suggest. He also accused Harris of using AI to modify the crowd sizes shown on camera at her own rallies, but none of these assertions have been proven. This presidential election has a razor thin margin. It’s odd and unfounded for Trump to claim that his rallies have superior attendance compared to Harris’.

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Vanessa Esguerra

Vanessa Esguerra (She/They) has been a Contributing Writer for The Mary Sue since 2023. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy, she (happily) rejected law school in 2021 and has been a full-time content writer since. Vanessa is currently taking her Master's degree in Japanese Studies in hopes of deepening her understanding of the country's media culture in relation to pop culture, women, and queer people like herself. She speaks three languages but still manages to get lost in the subways of Tokyo with her clunky Japanese. Fueled by iced coffee brewed from local cafés in Metro Manila, she also regularly covers anime and video games while queuing for her next match in League of Legends.

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