Former President Donald Trump showed up in Pennsylvania this weekend for a rally held at a Latrobe-area airport in support of GOP candidates in the state including Mehmet Oz, aka Dr. Oz, who is running for a soon-to-be open Senate seat against Democratic challenger John Fetterman.
Fabiola Galindo Sawao, a reporter with the Spanish-language news outlet Univision, shared a clip taken during the rally showing a lot of empty space in the crowd area, suggesting many people had already left. Trump is known for long, rambling speeches in which he often recounts some of the same complaints many people have already heard. At campaign stops, he doesn’t necessarily even focus on the local candidates Republicans are hoping to promote, and a reporter in Michigan shared documentation last month of attendees leaving a Trump speech before it concluded. Paul Egan, who is with the Detroit Free Press, nabbed a 30-second video showing people leaving, and it seemed clear they weren’t all simply in the same group. Nearly two dozen people stream towards the exits in the clip, some of whom are rather clearly departing. (One guy was putting on a jacket.)
At the Pennsylvania event, Sawao’s video shows empty space where what seems like hundreds more people could have gathered. “Trump complained that “the media never turn the cameras around” so I did and saw half the crowd at this PA rally had left thirty minutes before it ended,” she remarked. Watch below:
Trump complained that “the media never turn the cameras around” so I did and saw half the crowd at this PA rally had left thirty minutes before it ended pic.twitter.com/fd4RgMMbNB
— Fabiola Galindo Sawao (@FabiGalindo) November 6, 2022
Trump has, of course, complained for a long, long time about media coverage of crowd sizes at his events, including perhaps most infamously his inauguration. As for the actual race, polling suddenly began showing a close contest between Oz and Fetterman in recent weeks, and now, the outcome of the race remains highly uncertain — although there would obviously never be any way to confirm the outcome before it actually arrives. Doug Mastriano, an election-denying state Senator, is also running as the Pennsylvania GOP’s pick for governor, and polling — including a recent Fox survey — suggests Mastriano will lose by a lot. The Fox poll showed Mastriano losing to Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro by 16 percent.
