Trump spreads false conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris’s ‘fake and AI-generated’ Detroit crowd
Looks like Trump has tossed aside his fleeting unity pitch after the assassination attempt, and brushed off pleas from GOP leaders who’d rather see their nominee take aim at Democratic policies. Instead, the former president has comfortably slid back into his usual routine of personal jabs and incendiary rhetoric, targeting his Democratic rivals.
This time, Trump is stirring the pot with a baseless conspiracy theory, claiming that the crowd at Kamala Harris’s Detroit rally was “fake” and cooked up by artificial intelligence. Despite the lack of any supporting evidence, Trump has eagerly fanned the flames of misinformation.
Trump makes false claims about Harris’ crowd size
Donald Trump’s growing obsession with the size of Kamala Harris’s rally crowd is reportedly causing unease among Republicans. On Sunday, the former president took to social media to target Harris and said she had used artificial intelligence to fabricate images and videos of fake crowds.
“She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane,” Trump claimed earlier.
But, the New York Times, which was there to report on the event and saw the big crowd in Detroit outside an airplane hangar, didn’t buy Trump’s story. They pointed out that the crowd size reported by Harris’s campaign matched what was visible on the ground. Despite this, Trump falsely claimed on his Truth Social platform that “there was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it.”
Trump, known for always bragging about how big his crowds are, jumped on Truth Social to make unfounded claims saying she’s meddling in the election. He said, “It’s the same thing with her made-up ‘crowds’ at her speeches.”
“She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!,” he added.
Trump’s claims about Harris’s rally crowd found ‘baseless’
Pictures and videos from trusted sources like AP, Getty Images, NBC News, PBS, and C-SPAN back up the fact that there was a big crowd at the Wednesday rally for Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Different views of the video show them getting there to a really excited crowd, proving that the whole thing wasn’t made up.
“She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people!” The Republican nominee posted on his social media. In response to the ex-president’s erroneous assertions, participants at the rally and members of Harris’s team started disseminating photographs from the occasion across various social media platforms Sunday afternoon.
Chairwoman of the Michigan Democratic Party, Lavora Barnes, grabbed the opportunity to mock the rival and said, “Honoured that whoever made the AI image of 15,000 excited Democrats welcoming (Harris and Walz) was kind enough to include me at the lectern.”
“That AI crowd was really loud, my ears just stopped ringing from their imaginary cheering.”