Donald Trump and his supporters are famously obsessed with crowd size, and a video has gone viral comparing the audiences between recent rallies Mr Trump and Joe Biden held in Pennsylvania this week.
“Donald Trump and Joe Biden Both held rallies in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania this week,” reporter Benny Johnson, of conservative TV network Newsmax, wrote on Twitter in a post sharing the clip. “Here is what they looked like back to back. Incredible.”
The video, which has been viewed roughly 2.3m times, shows a packed house at Mr Trump’s rally in a stadium on Saturday, compared to a more modest crowd at the president’s speech on Tuesday in Wilkes-Barre.
Mr Trump, in his first major address since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, indeed brought numerous supporters to the Mohegan Sun Area, which appeared to be at its capacity of 8,000 seats.
The former president used the “Save America” rally – nominally a speech to support Republicans seeking office in Pennsylvania like aspiring US senator Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano – to attack federal law enforcement and make unfounded claims about Democratic Senate hopeful John Fetterman using illegal drugs.
Mr Trump accused the Biden administration of “weaponising the FBI and Justice Department like never ever before” and described the court-authorised search of his property as the FBI “breaking into the homes of their political opponents”.
“The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Biden was back in his home state this week as part of his own run of Pennsylvania midterm events.
The Biden speech shown in the comparison video took place on Tuesday in a gymnasium at Wilkes University, a small college with a student body of just over 2,000.
At the event, Mr Biden criticised Republicans for claiming to be the party of law and order, while backing the Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6.
“So let me say this to my Maga Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th,” he said. “Don’t tell me. Can’t do it.”
He continued: “For God’s sake, whose side are you on? Whose side are you on? Look, you’re either on the side of a mob or the side of the police. You can’t be pro-law enforcement and pro-insurrection. You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attacked the police on January 6th ‘patriots’. You can’t do it.”
Two days later, Mr Biden gave a primetime address in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Constitution was drafted.
“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” he said, adding that the man he defeated nearly two years ago – former president Mr Trump – and his “Maga Republican” allies “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic”.
“That is a threat to this country,” he continued.
It’s not the first time crowd-size comparisons are part of the political conversation.
Perhaps the first scandal of the Trump White House involved the then-president and his aides making dubious claims about the crowd size at Mr Trump’s January 2017 inauguration.
Mr Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway told incredulous NBC host Chuck Todd at the time that the debunked statements weren’t wrong, but based on “alternative facts”.
