President Donald Trump posted on social media on Thursday about the speech he gave the day prior to kick off the Great American State Fair in Washington, DC: “Everybody stayed right until the end of my Speech because they loved hearing about a truly successful America.”
False. Trump’s previous categorical declarations that “nobody leaves” his events until he is finished talking weren’t true, and his specific claim that nobody left this particular event until he had wrapped up was demonstrably incorrect as well.
A video posted by The Bulwark, a media outlet critical of Trump, showed dozens of people streaming out of the event about 17 minutes into the president’s 28-minute address. CNN senior correspondent Donie O’Sullivan, who was there interviewing attendees, says he observed hundreds of people heading to the exits as Trump’s speech was ongoing.
There are lots of unremarkable reasons for such departures. O’Sullivan says some people told him they had come to see the pre-speech flyovers by military jets. The crowd for an officially nonpartisan event commemorating the country’s 250th anniversary, held on the pedestrian-friendly National Mall in the Democratic-dominated capital, likely included a higher proportion of casual onlookers than a typical Trump rally in one of his rural strongholds. People have jobs, families and obligations. And it’s certainly true that most of the crowd stayed until Trump concluded.
