Administration

Trump inaccurately claims size of rally day before election was 32,000 instead of 4,200

President Trump appeared on Saturday to exaggerate the size of the crowd that gathered with him a day before election night in November 2016, asserting that 32,000 people showed up when the venue only held 4,200.

“We couldn’t even get near the arena, there were 32,000 people,” Trump said at a rally in Washington, Mich. “I finished speaking at 1 o’clock in the morning on election day — 32,000 people”

In fact, the Detroit Free Press reported that night that DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich., where Trump held the rally, has a capacity of 4,200, far less than the 32,000 that Trump claimed.

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Trump has a penchant for exaggerating crowd sizes. The president sent former White House press secretary Sean Spicer out before reporters last year to argue that Trump’s inauguration had “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

That assertion was widely refuted, as photos of Trump’s inauguration crowd compared to former President Obama’s inauguration crowd emerged.