Air Force Two taxis on the tarmac as several thousand attendees applaud during a presidential campaign rally for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in Michigan. Photo / Anadolu via Getty Images
Air Force Two taxis on the tarmac as several thousand attendees applaud during a presidential campaign rally for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in Michigan. Photo / Anadolu via Getty Images
The former president, who is known to be sensitive about crowd sizes and recently claimed to draw “the biggest crowds”, accused Harris of spreading doctored images and said she should be disqualified from the election.
Yesterday he claimed “nobody” turned up for her campaign stop in Michigan on August 7, perpetuating an online conspiracy theory that the reflection from Air Force Two proved the crowd had been digitally added.
He also accused Harris of “stealing” his flagship policy of eliminating taxes on tips, after she announced the move before an estimated crowd of 12,000 people.
“Has anybody noticed that Kamala cheated at the airport?” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘AI’d it’, and showed a massive crowd of so-called followers, but they didn’t exist!”
Screenshot of social media post from Donald Trump falsely claiming his rival used AI fake.
He went on to claim that Harris habitually faked the size of the crowds at rallies, and that she should be prevented from standing against him because it constituted “election interference”.
In fact, thousands of people gathered when the plane arrived at the airport, and no evidence that news organisations altered photos using artificial intelligence, the Washington Post reported. There is also no evidence that Harris, or Democrats more broadly, have cheated to win elections, despite Trump’s repeated false allegations that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged”.
The Harris campaign, which has almost 300,000 followers on Truth Social, has used Trump’s own platform to needle the former president over the size of crowds they draw to campaign events.
Trump claimed in August 2024 that the speech he gave on January 6, 2021 – shortly before rioters stormed the Capitol – had been given to a bigger crowd than the one that heard Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in 1963.
He also used Truth Social to attack Harris for copying his plan to eliminate tax on tips, claiming the Democrat has “no ideas” of her own.
It had been a key policy of the Trump campaign and was expected to prove popular in Nevada, a battleground state which has the highest proportion of food service workers in the country.
Trump had previously claimed to have come up with the idea while talking to a “very smart waitress” over dinner. Experts have warned that it could lead to tax revenues dropping by billions of dollars.
Trump recently claimed the speech he gave on January 6, 2021 was delivered to a bigger crowd than the one that heard Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in 1963.
“When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,” she said on Sunday.
Trump complained that Harris had copied his policy out of political desperation and would not follow through on the pledge.
“Kamala Harris, whose ‘honeymoon’ period is ending, and is starting to get hammered in the polls, just copied my no taxes on tips policy,” he said.
“The difference is, she won’t do it, she just wants it for political purposes! This was a Trump idea – She has no ideas, she can only steal from me.”
A recent poll for The Telegraph had the candidates tied on 40% each in Nevada, which Trump won narrowly four years ago despite losing the election overall.
The Republican has struggled to find his groove in the presidential race after Joe Biden, the US President, ended his campaign in July and endorsed Harris as his successor.
He has run through various nicknames for his new opponent – including “Laughin’ Kamala”, “Crazy Kamala” and “Kamabla” – which have failed to catch on, and was widely criticised when he accused her of deciding to “turn” black for political gain.
A New York Times poll, conducted between August 5 and August 9, had Harris leading by four points across the rust belt swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
