Donald Trump Rally Video Appears to Show Hundreds of Empty Seats

A video has emerged online showing large numbers of empty seats at a Donald Trump his rally in New Hampshire on Saturday.

The footage from Patriot Takes, a left-wing social media account that frequently posts videos critical of Trump and other MAGA figures, shows at least two sections at the Whittemore Center Arena in Durham, New Hampshire, which appear to be almost entirely unfilled.

The former president has frequently boasted about the size of crowds at his public events, often exaggerating and inflating their actual sizes by thousands. Trump’s appearance in Durham comes just over a month before the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary, with a Sunday CBS/YouGov poll showing Trump, the overall front runner in the Republican race, leading in New Hampshire with 44 percent, followed by former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on 29 percent.

Trump is not on stage in the short clip posted online by Patriot Takes, and it is unclear precisely when it was filmed, or if the empty seats were later filled once the former president began speaking.

During his campaign rally, in Durham, the former president was condemned by the White House and others for echoing rhetoric of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler after Trump claimed that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

The criticism arrived after Trump was also criticized for describing his political enemies as “vermin,” which experts said echoed how Hitler and Italian fascist Benito Mussolini talked about their opponents, as well as recently saying how he would be a dictator only on “day one” if re-elected to the White House.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd in Durham on Saturday. “They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just in three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

In a statement, President Joe Biden’s campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said Trump had “parroted Adolf Hitler” with his anti-immigrant comments in New Hampshire.

“Tonight Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy,” Moussa said. “He is betting he can win this election by scaring and dividing this country. He’s wrong. In 2020, Americans chose President Biden’s vision of hope and unity over Trump’s vision of fear and division—and they’ll do the same next November.”

Reacting to the criticism, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek that the former president “gave a great speech and knocked it out of the park in front of over 10,000 people” in Durham on Saturday.

“Contrast that with mainstream media and academia-at-large who have given safe haven for dangerous antisemitic and pro-Hamas rhetoric that is both dangerous and alarming considering what is going on in the world,” he said.

While sharing a clip of his Durham rally, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Classic Trump: say something crazy outrageous, neo-Nazi-like and it gets headlines, creates outrage. So wait a little. Then say it again, no one notices, no coverage, and it gets normalized and mainstreamed. Let’s be clear: migrants ‘poisoning the blood’ is Hitler rhetoric.”

Trump also repeated the “poisoning the blood” line in a post on Truth Social on Saturday night.

“ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS POISONING THE BLOOD OF OUR NATION. THEY’RE COMING FROM PRISONS, FROM MENTAL INSTITUTIONS — FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD,” he wrote. “WITHOUT BORDERS & FAIR ELECTIONS, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

While sharing a screenshot of the post on X, Josh Gerstein, a senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, wrote: “Might be just spur of moment choice of words, but then he posts in writing on social.”