Either delusional or outright lying, Trump compares his Washington, D.C. rally to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mired in controversy, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump spoke at the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally that is held in Washington D.C. every year on the Sunday before Memorial day, that The New York Times describes as “a vast event over Memorial Day weekend that is dedicated to accounting for military members taken as prisoners of war or listed as missing in action.”
Fortune reports that “Rolling Thunder spokeswoman Nancy Regg estimated Sunday’s event drew about 5,000 people — smaller than the crowds Trump typically attracts.”
NBC News reports that same figure, as does CNBC, Yahoo News, the U.S. Army’s official publication Stars and Stripes, and a host of other media outlets.
NBC News and others report that “The large plaza between the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall had large, empty pockets with no long lines for security, despite the thousands of bikers in town for the group’s ride from the Pentagon and through the streets of Washington.”
However, Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that hundreds of thousands of people were trying to attend the event – even claiming there were “600,000 people trying to get in”.
Trump even went so far as to compare Sunday’s rally to that of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered in the Washington Mall before an estimated crowd of 200,000 on August 28, 1963.
“I thought this would be like Dr. Martin Luther King, where the people would be lined up from here all the way to the Washington monument, right? Unfortunately, they don’t allow ’em to come in,” Trump claimed as he finished his speech.
As The Guardian observed: “There were no visible lines or back-ups at any point in or around the mall. Furthermore, according to the United States Census Bureau, the total population of the District of Colombia is just 672,228.”
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