Channeling Sean Spicer, Donald J. Trump took to Truth Social to claim a massive crowd attended America's 250th anniversary, even though empty rows of seats were seen in video footage. We're unsure of why Trump didn't try to claim that eleventy bazillion people attended.
Still, he settled for a 422,000 figure, similar to his brag for the Great American State Fair kickoff speech last month when he called it "packed to the brim" and claimed 45,000 people attended, insisting "everybody stayed right until the end of my speech because they loved hearing about a truly successful America."
Trump's Truth Social recap of his July 4th "Salute to America" speech depicted a jam-packed National Mall — 422,000 people at peak, then 150,000 more who supposedly braved the lightning to come back for his remarks. But photos and reporting from the actual event tell a different story: empty bleachers, gaps in the crowd, and people still filing in through security while he spoke. Outlets couldn't verify either number. The cameras, unlike the president, don't round up.
"The Crowd at 7:05 in the evening was 422,000 people!" Trump falsely said so, since nothing has been released yet to verify his lie. "All were forced to leave because of the weather, the event was cancelled, and everyone was gone because of lightning."
"When I heard that it was cancelled, I immediately overturned that decision, and waited a while for people to come back," he continued. "Incredibly, at least 150,000 people returned, and it was an even more spectacular evening than it would have been as normalized! It showed work under pressure."
"Congratulations to the Secret Service and Law Enforcement on being able to get so many people back into the Arena in such rapid fashion!" he added. "It was an amazing evening made even more spectacular by the fact that, immediately after the Great Fireworks ended, the rains came down, full blast! President DONALD J. TRUMP"
Even using Trump's own numbers, the crowd still doesn't measure up to 1976 — the Bicentennial parade alone reportedly drew about 500,000 people, per the New York Times' reporting at the time.
Last week, as we reported, Trump lost every single one of his shits (that's a lot of shit!) over the sparse, and sometimes empty crowd sizes at his Great American BIg Boy State Fair that staffers who'd posted an aerial photo were told to scrub from their accounts once the boss saw it.
