Fox News’s Jesse Watters has downplayed claims that more than 100,000 people attended Donald Trump’s recent rally in New Jersey.
Speaking on Monday’s episode of The Five, Watters said that a reporter he sent to the 2024 campaign rally in Wildwood said there were tens of thousands fewer people in attendance than what Trump and others are claiming.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, has a history of overstating the size of his crowds at rallies and public speaking engagements. He suggested that his 2017 inauguration had the highest-ever attendance for such an event, despite photos proving otherwise.
Speaking outside the New York courtroom during his hush money trial on Monday, Trump claimed that “over 100,000 people” saw him speak in Wildwood over the weekend but “a lot of the mainstream media didn’t want to say how many people. They didn’t want to cover it.”
Watters has now suggested Trump is again exaggerating the size of the crowd at his rallies, saying the reporter at the event in New Jersey “said it wasn’t 100,000, said it was closer to 30,000.”
Supporters cheer on former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on May 11. Fox News’s Jesse Watters downplayed suggestions more than 100,000 people attended the rally. Supporters cheer on former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on May 11. Fox News’s Jesse Watters downplayed suggestions more than 100,000 people attended the rally. JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
“That’s still a packed venue, and that’s still, I would say, 29,500 more than Joe Biden’s ever had,” Watters added.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, FoxNews.com columnist David Marcus agreed with Watters’ estimation.
“Jesse Watters on The Five just said that his reporter puts the Wildwood crowd at about 30,000. That I can believe,” Marcus posted.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign team via email for comment.
Lisa Fagan, spokesperson for the city of Wildwood, told the Associated Press that she estimated a crowd of between 80,000 and 100,000 people attended the Trump rally on Saturday based on having seen “dozens” of other events held in the same space.
Trump’s campaign team posted a video on X from a Fox News broadcast in which a reporter from the scene says: “This is one of the largest Trump rallies I’ve ever been to in the last five years or so.”
Stuart Varney, co-host of Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co., also said on Monday that “80,000 to 100,000 people flocked” to Trump’s rally in Wildwood, a sign of enthusiasm for his latest White House bid.
“To the media, the Jersey rally had to be ignored and denigrated because it demonstrated enthusiastic support for Trump,” Varney said.
“It also demonstrated, yet again, the sharp contrast between the Biden campaign. While Trump was packing them in at the Jersey shore, Biden was packing in the money from super-rich donors in San Francisco.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Um die besten Erfahrungen zu bieten, verwenden wir Technologien wie Cookies, um Geräteinformationen zu speichern und/oder darauf zuzugreifen. Wenn Sie diesen Technologien zustimmen, können wir Daten wie das Surfverhalten oder eindeutige IDs auf dieser Website verarbeiten. Die Nichteinwilligung oder der Widerruf der Einwilligung kann bestimmte Merkmale und Funktionen beeinträchtigen.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
