CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday aired humiliating footage of pervasive empty seats at President Donald Trump’s rally in Youngstown, Ohio, one week after Trump insisted he has never had an empty seat and never will.
Collins, hosting “The Source,” showed video from CNN’s crew inside the Covelli Centre revealing bare stretches in the arena’s upper levels. She allowed that it was hard to know how much to read into the turnout, then turned to Trump’s own claims.
“But he is the one who’s saying there are these big overflow rooms,” Collins said.
Her guest, Democratic strategist Karen Finney, said Trump was trying to spin his events as if it were still the 2016 or 2024 campaign, and argued Democrats should want him on the road.
“I say keep him out there because he is mobilizing Democratic voters. He is doing more for our base, frankly,” Finney said.
Collins wasn't the only reporter who noticed. Washington Post White House correspondent Emily Davies posted on X in real time as Trump took the stage, writing: "There are entirely empty sections in the arena where Trump is currently hosting a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. Both parties see this area as key to winning the races for Senate and governor. These photos were taken as Trump walked on stage."
Davies, who shared the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Post's Jan. 6 coverage, attached photos documenting the bare bleachers behind the president.
Trump has made crowd size a running fight with the press. Last week he demanded The New York Times be arrested over its reporting on empty seats at his rallies. On Saturday, reporters documented whole empty sections in Clarksville, Tennessee, echoing scenes at the GOP’s Dallas midterm convention in September.
The Tribune Chronicle estimated 2,500 to 3,000 people attended, down from roughly 7,000 when Trump rallied in the same arena in 2017 and about 5,500 in 2022. Youngstown station WFMJ found that tarps covered roughly 25 percent of the arena’s seating, and that the crowd never occupied more than about two-thirds of the seats left open.
At one point, Trump himself raised the subject of attendance. According to The Daily Beast, he called Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, 30, “beautiful” and suggested a team might want her help selling tickets.
The venue is the same where Trump told the crowd in 2017 not to sell their homes because the area’s factories would fill back up. GM’s Lordstown plant, then the region’s largest employer, closed in 2019.
The rally comes as a CNN poll released last week showed Democrat Sherrod Brown leading Republican Sen. Jon Husted 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, with Democrat Amy Acton up 8 points on Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in the governor’s race.