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By Alia Shoaib
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Donald Trump has hit back at claims his rally in Philadelphia on Saturday failed to draw a large crowd.
Images have circulated on social media appearing to show that many of the 10,000 seats at Temple University's Liacouras Center were empty.
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Trump took to Truth Social on Tuesday to defend the size of his audience, writing: "The Biden Campaign engaging in Cheap Fakes! They're embarrassed that they drew a very weak Crowd, and so they have to manipulate and lie about President Trump's energetic and overflow Rally. MAGA!"
He shared one photo labeled "Trump rally" that appears to show a full house at the Temple University venue, along with a second image titled "Obama/Biden rally" that appears to show the same auditorium empty.
It is not clear when the second image was taken, but President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama appeared at a rally in the venue in 2022 in front of a substantial crowd.
A Democratic party chair shared images of Trump's rally on X, formerly Twitter, and pointed out that the top section of the auditorium appeared to be empty.
"Look at all those empty seats in Philadelphia. Old man can't even fill a high school gym fill anymore," Chris D. Jackson wrote on X, formerly Twitter, adding: "Sad."
In response to an X user who claimed that the top floor wasn't allowed to be filled, Jackson shared an image of a Biden rally at the same venue in 2022 that did appear to have the top section filled.
"BIDEN ACTUALLY FILLED THE ARENA TRUMP COULDN'T!" Jackson wrote.
Another X user commented on a video of the rally: "It's half empty. Zero attendees in the upper bowl. Odd for a guy that brags about pulling 100k ppl in NJ and 30k in the Bronx."
Newsweek reached out to a Trump campaign spokesperson for comment.
Pennsylvania is a critical battleground state, with Biden having narrowly won in 2020 and Trump having won also by a narrow margin in 2016.
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Trump's crowd sizes have historically been a source of debate.
When the former president held a rally in the Democratic New York City borough of the Bronx in May, his spokesperson told Newsweek that 25,000 people attended it, though a number of people questioned the figure.
And at the end of 2023, a super PAC aligned with Trump's then-GOP presidential rival Ron DeSantis released a video mocking Trump's claims of crowd sizes, contrasting his claims with clips of empty seats and large gaps in crowds.
Trump's fixation with crowd size dates back to the early days of his political career, when he insisted that the crowd at his 2017 inauguration consisted of more than 1 million people—a figure that was widely doubted.
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