Today
‘Raftergate’ Explained: Was Trump’s Pensacola Rally ‘Packed to the Rafters?’
https://www.snopes.com/2017/12/09/wa...acked-rafters/
Another day, another discussion of crowd size at a Trump event.
In what has become a characteristic feature of the Trump presidency, a Twitter dispute regarding crowd size went viral on 9 December 2017.
In this case, the contested crowd had gathered the night before to hear Mr. Trump speak at a rally in Pensacola, Florida.
The speech, just before a special election for U.S. Senator in neighboring Alabama, was newsworthy because the President used it to urge to people to “get out and vote for Roy Moore,” the former Alabama judge beleaguered by accusations of engaging in relationships with and sexually harassing teenaged girls.
The dispute began following an early Saturday morning tweet from the President about the previous evening’s attendance.
In response, a number of people responded with photographs purporting to show that the arena was not full. Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel tweeted (and later deleted) one such image of seemingly empty crowds, shedding doubt on Trump’s description.
Weigel here is referring to what appears to be a Trump-like figure walking in the bottom right of the photograph he initially shared — something a number of commenters on the internet have suggested disputes, in a very narrow way, Trump’s claim of the image being taken “hours” before he arrived.