For some reason, former President Donald Trump held a campaign rally in the Bronx on Thursday, although he lost the city (meaning New York City, of which the Bronx is a part) by a very large margin in the 2020 presidential election.
And very soon thereafter arrived the attention on the crowd size for Trump’s event.
Republicans Against Trump on X (the site formerly called Twitter) shared a clip seemingly from local news coverage of the event that included an aerial shot of the crowd plus a lot of empty space around it. And those gathered in the park didn’t seem that numerous on their own. “Presidential candidate Donald Trump came to the south Bronx today to speak to some supporters and to a fair amount of empty space in Crotona Park,” a voiceover in the clip said, referring to the venue of the campaign event.
There’s a timestamp visible in the footage of 11:09, but the journalist providing the audio recap was clearly speaking in past tense. In short, the clip wasn’t from Thursday morning, hours before Trump actually spoke, as some in the MAGA-verse suggested.
The apparently meager turnout comes on the heels of a consistent lack of particularly substantial grassroots protests for Trump at the courthouse in southern Manhattan where his high-profile criminal trial on felony business records allegations has been moving forward. Trump clamored for some kind of street-level display of support for his cause, and small groups have shown up, but images from the scene have shown them to be just that: small groups. And there have also been counter-protesters bringing displays of opposition like a banner reading “bootlickers” that was hung on a fence behind a spot where a group of Trump’s visiting allies were trying to hold a press conference!
This is really embarrassing for Donald Trump.
From New York’s ABC7 report about the Trump rally last night: “Donald Trump came to the south Bronx today to speak to some supporters and to a fair amount of empty space in Crotona Park.” https://t.co/mqHqAkCdxS
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) May 24, 2024
