At Donald Trump’s Thursday’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the former president compared himself favorably to Martin Luther King Jr.
After incorrectly claiming that “no one was killed on January 6th,” Trump went on to gloat that the crowd at his insurrection rally was larger than the March On Washington, which Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” said the former president. “If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech and you look at ours...we had more.”
Trump on his January 6 speech: "Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours ... we had more." pic.twitter.com/i9DL82vuLg
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 8, 2024
Growing ever more furious at this perceived slight, Trump began throwing (made up) numbers around. King, he said, spoke to a million (actually 250,000) people. But, according to Trump, the January 6th crowd actually looks just as big in photographs as King’s! and yet the biased experts insist that only spoke to 25,000 would-be insurrectionists and rioters (actually 10,000).
One could give Trump the benefit of the doubt, maybe he is experiencing a “senior moment” and actually confusing his (famously sparsely attended) inauguration and the events of January 6, 2021.
Clearly, the Republican presidential nominee is rattled by the massive crowds that have greeted Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz over the past week. Early Thursday morning, Trump took to Truth Social to complain. “If Kamala has 1,000 people at a Rally, the Press goes “crazy,” and talks about how “big” it was - And she pays for her “Crowd.” 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. The Fake News is the Enemy of the People!” In the same press conference, Trump also made the same point in an arguably even madder fashion. (It is, in fact, difficult to think of another moment where he was this angry.)
"I have 10 times, 20 times, 30 times the crowd size" -- Trump gets big mad at a reporter who asks him about Kamala Harris's large crowd sizes pic.twitter.com/X0QHeSFiHH
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 8, 2024
In the past, Trump has drawn large crowds, perhaps even approaching that 100,000 number, but certainly January 6 was not one of them—or one to brag about.
