Huge crowd at Harris and Walz' rally in Detroit was real

The claim: “Nobody” attended Harris and Walz’s August 7 rally in Michigan

A Facebook post from August 10 (direct link, archive link) shows a photo of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz exiting Air Force Two in front of a large crowd of supporters in Michigan on August 7.

“Gotta love it. Fake crowd photo,” reads the post, which shows a screenshot of another Facebook post. “Look at the reflection of the engines, there's no one there!”

The post was shared more than 800 times in four days. Former President Donald Trump shared a similar image in an Aug. 11 post on Truth Social, claiming Harris used AI to create the crowd.

“There was no one at the plane and she put artificial intelligence on it and showed a huge 'crowd' of so-called followers BUT THEY DIDN'T EXIST!” Trump wrote. “She is a FRAUD. She had NO ONE waiting and the 'crowd' looked like 10,000 people!”

More from the Fact Check team: How we select and research claims | E-mail newsletter | Facebook page

Our rating: False

Photos and videos from the August 7 event show that a large crowd was present to greet Harris and Walz.

Videos and pictures show that the crowd was real

The image in the post shows Harris and Walz, her running mate, being greeted by thousands after arriving in Michigan for a campaign rally on August 7. Footage from the event shows Harris descending the stairs of the plane wearing the same white jacket seen in the Facebook post.

Although Trump and other social media users claim that images from the event were doctored to show the crowd gathered to greet the two, dozens of images and videos from the August 7 event prove that the crowd was real.

C-SPAN's recording of the event shows Harris and Walz shaking hands with rally attendees outside Air Force Two as they make their way to the hangar, where they will deliver speeches shortly after their arrival. The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News also released videos and photos showing the large crowd outside the plane and inside the hangar from various angles. Other journalists, political groups and attendees also shared footage of the rally from the perspective of the crowd. All show thousands of attendees.

Harris' campaign team announced on X (formerly Twitter) that 15,000 people attended the rally.

However, that does not mean that all images of the event perfectly reflect reality. Some of the images of the event circulating on the Internet have been edited to some extent, says James O'Brien, professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

“These images have all been edited, but that is not the same as them being lies,” O'Brien said, pointing to the image in the Facebook post as an example.

The photo appears to have “an artificial blur effect applied, but that could be because it looks nice and someone was being creative, or perhaps the effect was added to hide a flaw in the image,” he said.

O’Brien also said that the image shared by Trump appearsS to have been edited, and it It is possible that someone manipulated the photos using AI.

Regarding the post's claim that the plane's reflection proves the image's legitimacy, Chad Slattery, an independent aerospace photographer, told USA TODAY there's a reason the crowd isn't visible in the reflection of Air Force Two.

Fact check: GOP critics say Tim Walz 'let Minnesota burn' during 2020 protests. Here's what happened

The lens used by the photographer, the distance between the crowd and the plane, and the curvature of the ship – a Boeing C-32 – all play a role in reflecting the crowd in the image, Slattery said.

“The photographer used a medium-length telephoto lens, which shrinks distances,” he said. “The C-32A is actually farther away than it appears. The engine nacelle and lower fuselage reflect the runway; their curvatures make nearby objects appear much farther away than they are, and in this case the crowd would have been reflected as a series of dots at most.”

According to Slattery, this is the same phenomenon that makes objects in a car's side mirror appear farther away than they actually are. The surface of the mirror is curved like the plane.

USA TODAY reached out to Facebook users who shared the post and Trump's campaign for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.

Our fact-checking sources:

Chad Slattery, August 12, email exchange and phone interview with USA TODAY
James O'Brien, August 12-13, email exchange with USA TODAY
C-SPAN, August 7, Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz campaign in Detroit
Detroit Free Press (YouTube), August 7, Live: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz continue their campaign tour in the Detroit area
The Detroit News, August 7, Presidential campaigns focus on Michigan with new intensity
@wdet, August 8, X-Post
@RpsAgainstTrump, August 7, X post
@qp133, August 8, TikTok post
HowStuffWorks, accessed August 13. Why are objects in the side mirror closer than they appear?

Huge crowd at Harris and Walz' rally in Detroit was real

The claim: “Nobody” attended Harris and Walz’s August 7 rally in Michigan

You may also like...

Recent Posts

Huge crowd at Harris and Walz' rally in Detroit was real

The claim: “Nobody” attended Harris and Walz’s August 7 rally in Michigan

You may also like...

Everton face injury crisis after Premier League opener

USC's Ashlyn Watkins still suspended from team following arrest | USC Gamecocks Sports

Pfizer's cancer cachexia drug shows positive results in mid-stage testing

Recent Posts