Former President Donald Trump made the astonishing claim that the crowd he had with him on January 6 was larger than that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, speech to the crowd.
As vice president and likely Democratic presidential candidate, Trump was largely inactive in the election campaign. Kamala Harris has traveled across the country with her new vice president, the governor. Tim Walz (D-MN).
However, Harris was criticized by the media for not holding a press conference or interview during this time. Trump hoped to turn it into a “general press conference” at Mar-a-Lago.
On Thursday afternoon, Trump spoke to reporters for over an hour in a chaotic press conference that featured a surreal exchange with Maggie Haberman about the size of the crowds – which has become a sore point as Harris is a much bigger crowd attraction than expected:
HABERMAN: Mr. President, you just said that it was a peaceful transfer of power when you left office last time. You did not (inaudible)…
TRUMP: What – what is your question?
HABERMAN: My question is: Can you not (inaudible) say when was the last time there was a peaceful transfer of power when you left office?
The second (ph) …
TRUMP: No, I think people – if you look at January 6th, which a lot of people don’t talk about much, I think those people were treated very harshly when you compare them to other events in this country where a lot of people were killed. On January 6th, nobody was killed.
But I think that people were treated very unfairly on January 6th. And they – where – they were there to complain, not through me. They were there to complain about an election. And, you know, it’s very interesting. The largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to, and I said peacefully and patriotically, which nobody wants to say, but I said peacefully and patriotically.
The biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken to. And you saw it, Maggie (ph), I was at the — at the mall, I was at the Washington Monument, I was at — the whole thing. I had crowds — I don’t know who ever had a bigger crowd than me, but I had them a lot.
That day was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to. And I’ll tell you, it’s very hard to find a picture of that crowd. You see the picture of a relatively small number of people walking to the Capitol, but you never see the picture of the crowd.
The largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to — I’ve spoken to the largest crowds. Nobody has spoken to larger crowds than I have. If you look at Martin Luther King when he gave his speech — his great speech — and if you look at ours, same lot, same everything, same number of people, if not — we had more.
And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people, but if you look at the exact same picture and everything is the same, because it was the fountains, the whole thing, all the way back – from Lincoln to Washington – and you look at it and see the picture of his people, my people, we actually had more people. They said I had 25,000 and he had a million people, and I’m OK with that because I liked Dr. Martin Luther King.
Available estimates show that the crowd that led Trump’s rally was about five times smaller than that of Dr. King.
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