'Silly': Trump slams Harris' crowd sizes while hosting fewer rallies than ever: analysis
Former President Donald Trump, 78, doesn't campaign like he used to, according to a new political analysis.
Trump's recent fixation on Vice President Kamala Harris' rally crowd sizes was dubbed "silly" by a Washington Post analyst Thursday who found a surprising downward trend in the former president's campaign style.
"Attendance depends on there being something to attend," writes Philip Bump. "And in 2024, Trump is giving his supporters fewer opportunities to form a crowd in the first place."
Bump tallied up Trump's public appearances during his 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns as the former president continued to rail against Harris on his social media site Truth Social.
"If Kamala has 1,000 people at a Rally, the Press goes ‘crazy,’ and talks about how ‘big’ it was,” he wrote. "When I have a Rally, and 100,000 people show up, the Fake News doesn’t talk about it, THEY REFUSE TO MENTION CROWD SIZE."
ALSO READ: Why ‘vanilla’ Tim Walz is the ingredient to beat Trump: Dem lawmakers
Raw Story reported from The Bronx on a Trump rally in May he claimed drew 25,000 people but NYPD officers on the scene put it at about 3,500.
According to Bump, such rallies have become increasingly rare events for the Trump campaign.
Trump held 22 rallies in July and through Aug. 10 of 2016, Bump reports. During the same time period in 2024, Trump held just seven.
In 2016, Trump held a total of 37 rallies in July and August. In 2020 — as Trump held public office amid a global pandemic that spurred mass social distancing — Trump held 13 rallies, about half of which were virtual, according to Bump.
Trump has announced he will host a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, his social club in Florida, at 2 p.m. ET Thursday and his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has spent the week trailing Harris across the U.S.
But Bump notes the Mar-a-Lago event will likely be limited to what Trump described as “enemies of the people" — the media.
"There’s plenty of time for Trump to gear his campaign back up, certainly, and it’s likely that he will," Bump concludes. "But it’s silly to fret about Harris drawing more support when Trump isn’t holding many events to which supporters can be drawn."