President Joe Biden faced social media criticism when posts went viral Tuesday about empty seats at his campaign event in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Brigitte Gabriel and Benny Johnson, conservatives with millions of followers, were among those who published posts that mocked perceived empty seats at Biden’s stop in his hometown.
“Here is the ‘crowd’ that showed up in Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton Pennsylvania today. Note how the Biden campaign had to put up curtains to make the room smaller. There are more reporters in the room than ‘Biden supporters.’ Joe Biden is not real,” Johnson wrote on X, formerly Twitter, to his 2.3 million followers.
However, reports and photos shared from inside Biden’s event at the Scranton Cultural Center dispute the claims.
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NewsNation reporter Kellie Meyer replied on X to a post about the empty seats by saying: “Your picture was taken hours ago. It is full and people in the balcony, per our reporter inside.”
Mike Memoli of NBC News posted a photo on X from the location of the alleged empty seats that show those seats clearly occupied as Biden is speaking.
Biden’s stop in Scranton kicked off a multicity tour of Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the path to the 2024 presidency. He contrasted his plan to impose higher taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 with the promise from his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, to preserve his 2017 corporate tax cuts.
“No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher,” Biden told a room full of supporters.
During his remarks, he also took aim at Trump’s tumbling Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) stock.
“If Trump’s stock in Truth Social, his company, drops any lower, he might do better under my tax plan than his,” Biden said.
He added that “trickle-down economics” had failed and “the truth is Donald Trump embodies that failure.”
Newsweek reached out to the Biden and Trump campaigns Tuesday afternoon for comment.
Biden spent part of his childhood in working-class Scranton before his family moved to Delaware. He won Pennsylvania in 2020 by roughly 80,000 votes. Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton there by fewer than 45,000 votes in 2016. Polls show another close race this year.
Biden heads to Pittsburgh on Wednesday and Philadelphia on Thursday. Trump was in eastern Pennsylvania on Saturday for a campaign rally that drew thousands of supporters.
As Biden campaigns, Trump will spend most of the week in a New York City courtroom for his criminal trial over an alleged hush money scheme.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.