Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) came to Michigan Wednesday. The crowds?
"If I'm being generous, that looks like 10 rows of 10 seats across on each side," reported a tech correspondent Chris O'Brien. "So about a total of 200 people potentially?"
Former President Donald Trump's running mate addressed the nation from the campaign rally in Byron Center. Footage from C-Span showed a tight shot of Vance standing in front of two trucks, one red and one blue.
Photographs shared by commenter Alex Cole and Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield showed empty folding chairs in the back row. Kornfield noted more people were hanging out in the shade.
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"The photo of a virtually empty Vance rally going around doesn’t accurately depict the crowd size now," she wrote at 1:30 p.m.
Kornfield's followers were not impressed.
"This still looks like a very bad turnout for a Vice Presidential nominee's event," political scientist David Darmofal replied. "Maybe they're under the shady trees. But it's not like there's a lot of seats there to begin with."
Crowd size has become a key talking point in recent weeks as newly energized Democratic voters flock by the tens of thousands to rallies for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
Trump has lashed out, first boasting his "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021 drew more people than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech then suggesting without evidence that artificial intelligence had been used to augment Harris rally images.
The Republican nominee walked back the claim amid calls from fellow conservatives such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley that he "quit whining" about it.
That didn't stop activist Amy Siskind Wednesday from sharing a photograph of Vance's rally, which appears to have been taken by New York Times reporter Chris Cameron.
It shows dozens of people seated and at least a dozen white folding chairs without occupants.
"The 'crowd' for JD Vance in Michigan," Siskind said. "Other than the press, there's like 10 people there womp womp."
