Misleading Meme Compares Trump and Biden Crowd Sizes
The Claim
A rally for former President Donald Trump attracted a much larger crowd than a town hall for now-President Joe Biden, which supports the assertion that Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
News posted on
Emerging story
The editor-in-chief of far-right website Gateway Pundit wrote a misleading post on July 25 that was shared by thousands of people over Facebook and Twitter. The post did a side-by-side comparison of two photos: one showing a crowd at a Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday, and the other showing a town hall for Biden hosted by CNN in Cincinnati, Ohio, last week.
Misbar’s Analysis
The headline and photos are misleading. While Trump did have a larger audience at that Saturday rally, the magnitude is not comparable to Biden’s because the two events were held under different circumstances. The town hall hosted by CNN was invitation-only, while the Trump rally was open to all interested participants.
Jim Hoft, the editor-in-chief of Gateway Pundit and the person who wrote the post, misleadingly connected the crowd sizes to the results of the 2020 presidential election. Gateway Pundit is widely known as an untrustworthy source of information. The website’s Twitter account was suspended in February for repeatedly spreading false information, especially concerning the 2020 presidential election results. Hoft was the person who ran that account on Twitter.
Additionally, there has never been any objective question that Biden won the presidential election last year. Contrary to claims from Trump and other Republican lawmakers, there has been zero evidence of voter fraud. Biden won the 2020 presidential election and has been president for seven months now.
