Donald Trump Rails at Video of Empty Seats During His Rally

In a heated exchange over social media, former President Donald Trump lashed out after a video surfaced showing empty seats at his rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
The video, posted on X, formerly Twitter, by the campaign account of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, @KamalaHQ, claimed that Trump’s audience was leaving as he “rambled incoherently,” leaving the venue partially empty.
The video shows people leaving a section of the auditorium along the side of the Trump rally which has many empty seats. The section appears to be behind the stage. A muffled Trump can be heard speaking in the background.
The video was captioned: “Trump’s audience is exiting as he rambles incoherently in Pennsylvania, leaving even more empty seats.” It had been viewed 4.8 million times by Sunday.
Trump took to his platform, Truth Social, on Sunday afternoon to dismiss the video’s authenticity.
He claimed that the footage was taken before the rally began and that the venue was actually packed, with thousands more supporters turned away due to space constraints.
Trump accused Harris of spreading misinformation, labeling her a “Crooked Radical Left Politician” and linking her to a broader conspiracy to remove President Joe Biden, which he alleged involved other prominent Democrats.
“We had to turn away lots of people yesterday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,” Trump wrote. “Comrade Kamala Harris’ Social Media Operation showed empty seats, long before the Rally started, early in the afternoon when, in actuality, we had to turn away 11,500 people!”
The back-and-forth didn’t end there. Late Sunday night, Harris’s campaign account fired back, asserting that the video was recorded while Trump was speaking.
“Americans are tired of your lies and slur-filled delusions.,” the account wrote. “It’s getting… old.”
Other accounts replied to @KamalaHQ, accusing the account of posting a misleading video and posting other videos showing the full house closer to where Trump was speaking, rather than around the side of the venue.
However, no matter where the footage posted by @KamalaHQ was captured in the venue, it does show “Trump’s audience exiting,” while he was audibly speaking.
Although the audio is muffled, it sounds like Trump may be saying, “Thank you, Carl. Thank you very much. Thank you,” before introducing “New York’s Broome County DA Paul Battisti, Paul Battisti,” which occurred one hour and 12 minutes into his speech.
Trump’s speech at the rally stretched for almost two hours, and focused mostly on attacking Harris for the current rate of illegal immigration across the U.S.- Mexico Border, as well as claiming she is a “super left liberal” who is responsible for inflation.
He said she was “a very beautiful woman,” but also said, “I’m a better looking person than Kamala.”
A keyword analysis of a transcript of the speech reveals that “Kamala Harris” was the most common two-word pairing in the speech, mentioned 16 times.
If common words such as “going,” “know,” “because,” and “very” are removed, the most frequently used single words were “country” (80 times), “people” (74 times), “great (49 times), and “Kamala” (45 times).
His most commonly used words with relation to specific political issues were “tax” (30 times), “border” (19 times), “China” (19 times), and “inflation” (17 times).
Update 8/19/24, 4:26 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.