President Donald Trump appears to be massaging the numbers over the size of the crowd at his July 4 celebration on the National Mall.
Over the weekend, Trump offered a shifting account of attendance at his “Salute to America 250” event, meant to commemorate the nation’s semiquincentennial, which was disrupted by severe weather.
“There’s no way we can be deterred,” the 80-year-old Republican said during his speech on Saturday evening, after a stormy forecast prompted officials to evacuate the Mall for over two hours. “They estimated they had 375,000 people before everybody had to leave and they now have 150,000 people. It’s the craziest thing anyone’s ever seen.”
By Sunday afternoon, the figure had grown.
“The Crowd at 7:05 in the evening was 422,000 people! All were forced to leave because of the weather, the event was cancelled, and everyone was gone because of lightning,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
He added that he personally overturned a decision to cancel the event and “waited a while” for attendees to trickle back to the Mall, where his speech began after 11 p.m.
“Incredibly, at least 150,000 people returned, and it was an even more spectacular evening than it would have been as normalized! It showed work under pressure.” Trump wrote. “Congratulations to the Secret Service and Law Enforcement on being able to get so many people back into the Arena in such rapid fashion!”
There is, however, no credible basis for Trump’s crowd size claims, according to media reports.
Newsweek noted that no independent confirmation supported the president’s figures. Even if they were accurate, the crowd would still have fallen short of the estimated 500,000 who gathered for the nation’s bicentennial parade in 1976, according to The New York Times.
The Republican president has a history of exaggerating crowd sizes. After his 2017 inauguration, his then press secretary called it the “largest audience to ever see an inauguration,” though reports indicated the turnout was much smaller than at Barack Obama’s 2009 ceremony.
The Independent has reached out to the White House for comment.
During his July 4 speech, which ran for about 40 minutes, the president highlighted his administration’s military actions in Venezuela and Iran while delivering a broad denunciation of communism. He also honored NASA astronauts and military veterans.
The speech was capped off with a massive fireworks display over the National Mall, which Trump had previously promoted as the “largest fireworks show in history.”
The event was organized by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership created by Trump that is spearheading the Great American State Fair, a weeks-long spectacle on the National Mall.
The fair has been dogged by a series of setbacks, including musical acts and blue states dropping out, a power outage, weather disruptions, and what appeared to be thin crowds.
