Former President Trump gave an exasperated response when asked whether he fears Vice President Harris’s crowd sizes at a press conference Thursday.
“Oh, give me a break,” Trump said. “Listen, I had 107,000 people in New Jersey, you didn’t report it. I’m so glad you asked. What did she have yesterday, 2,000 people?”
Harris’s campaign said that 14,000 people attended her rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday and 15,000 attended another in Detroit on Wednesday night.
“If I ever had 2,000 people, you’d say my campaign is finished,” Trump said.
Following President Biden dropping out of the presidential race late last month, Harris has garnered huge enthusiasm and fundraising at the top of the Democratic ticket. She announced on Tuesday her vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who was celebrated by Democrats across the party’s spectrum.
“Lemme tell you, we have the enthusiasm,” Trump said. “The Republican Party — and me as a candidate — but the Republican Party has the enthusiasm. Because people wanna see crime stopped, they wanna see a country that’s respected.”
Later in the press conference, Trump said the crowd at his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, was the largest he has ever addressed, and compared the crowd to that amassed during Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
“And I’ll tell you, it’s very hard to find a picture of that crowd … If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours. Same real estate. Same everything. Same number of people, if not, we had more,” he said.
According to an average of national polls from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, Trump is leading Harris by 0.2 points.
A new survey by Ipsos found Harris and Trump in a “statistical dead heat for the presidency” among voters in critical swing states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.
Trump conceded that Harris was enjoying a honeymoon period in polling after her announcement, but said some polls still show him winning in a landslide.
The Hill has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment.