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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Lifestyle
Inga Parkel

Jimmy Kimmel heckles Trump over crowd sizes with embarrassing video of empty rally

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Eric Garcia

Eric Garcia

Washington Bureau Chief

Jimmy Kimmel has ridiculed Donald Trump over his obsession with crowd sizes.

During his latest rally in Uniondale, Long Island, the former president boasted that he draws bigger crowds than Elvis Presley.

“So I call up my wife, and I’d say, ‘Baby, who can draw crowds like me’,” Trump told attendees. “Nobody, nobody can. I’m the greatest of all time, maybe greater even than Elivs. Elvis had a guitar. I don’t have the privilege of a guitar.”

Finishing Trump’s thought on the latest episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the late-night host joked: “Thanks to my tiny baby hands, I am unable to play the guitar.”

Kimmel continued: “As ‘disgraceland’ was boasting about having bigger crowds than Elvis, people started getting bored and leaving the arena.”

Showing footage of a half-emptied arena, he noted: “This is how his big rally wrapped up in Uniondale. Elvis hadn’t left the building, but half the crowd had.”

Despite the footage, police estimated that 50,000 people showed up for the rally, which took place following the second attempt on his life last weekend, according to local New York news station PIX 11. It marked one of Trump’s largest rallies of his re-election campaign.

Trump has become increasingly consumed with the size of his campaign rally crowds.

Last month, he falsely declared that attendance at his rally on January 6, 2021 – prior to the attack on the Capitol – rivaled the size of the crowd that Martin Luther King Jr drew to watch his “I have a dream” speech in August 1963.

Jimmy Kimmel ridiculed Trump’s recent claim that ‘nobody’ can ‘draw crowds like me’
Jimmy Kimmel ridiculed Trump’s recent claim that ‘nobody’ can ‘draw crowds like me’ (Getty Images)

Vice President Kamala Harris capitalized on Trump’s obsession during their first presidential debate, baiting him into responding to her claim that his supporters leave rallies early out of “exhaustion and boredom.”

“People don’t leave my rallies,” Trump fired back. “We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

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Kimmel also played a clip of Trump’s recent interview on Fox News, in which he complained that the ABC debate moderators fact-checked “everything I said.”

“And the audience, they went crazy,” Trump claimed, with Kimmel interrupting to state that “there was no audience.”

“The debate was held in an empty room. There was no audience. I mean, is he losing his mind, or does he lie so automatically he doesn’t even know it anymore,” the comedian added. “At least in the past, when he exaggerated the size of the crowd, there was a crowd.”

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