Donald Trump has been mocked for claiming 29,000 supporters flocked to see him work the fryer at McDonald’s during his campaign stunt last weekend.
“We had 29,000 people surrounding it. We weren’t sure if we were able to get out,” Trump boasted at a rally in Las Vegas on Thursday night.
While large crowds of people did line the surrounding streets of the McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose, Bucks County, to get a glimpse of the former president at the fast food joint on October 20, social media users were quick to point out that Trump’s numbers appear to be inflated.
Several people pointed out the small population of the town itself.
“For context around this obvious lie, that McDonald’s is in Feasterville-Trevose, PA which has a total population of 24,657,” one person said on X.
Another said: “There were maybe a hundred people or so outside around the mcdonalds [sic], not a small college football stadium capacity crowd.”
The capacity of smaller college football stadiums ranges from approximately 14,000 - 24,000, according to Bet MGM.
“That is a lie,” another person wrote. “The people in that town said he was lucky if he had 5,000 people. Look at his rallys [sic]. He is going to screw himself at Madison Square Garden, this weekend. He will be lucky if he gets half of the seats filled!”
The McDonald’s branch Trump visited for his 15-minute photo-op is located within the Lower Southampton Township, which had a population of 20,427 in 2023, according to the US Census Bureau.
Bucks County journalist Tom Sofield reported for local news outlet LevittownNow.com that the crowds were closer to “several thousand,” adding that Trump had also previously claimed 25,000 people turned out to see him.
“There were several thousand excited supporters nearby, but the figure wasn’t 25,000, as stated by the former president later,” Sofield said in a post on X.
Trump has long become consumed with the size of his campaign rally crowds.
He falsely declared earlier in the campaign that his rally on January 6, 2021 – prior to the attack on the US Capitol – drew in a crowd that rivaled the size of the crowd that Martin Luther King Jr drew to watch his “I have a dream” speech in August 1963.
Vice President Kamala Harris has capitalized on Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes on her campaign trail.
During the presidential debate on September 10, she baitd 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.”
