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MAGA Idiots Fail to Spin Away Embarrassing Fact on Trump Bronx Rally

This pathetic lie will brighten your day.

Donald Trump, wearing a blue suit and red tie, walks with team members.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Team Trump is up to its old tricks again and falsely claiming a lackluster rally in the Bronx on Thursday drew a crowd of 25,000 supporters. This estimate comically contradicts on-the-ground reports, the NYPD, aerial views, and the laws of physics.

But reality is no match for the notoriously anti-factual Trump and his supporters, who have been obsessed with lying about his crowd size since the 2017 inauguration—and have become the living embodiment of the Nazi-era propaganda tactic of “Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth.”

Tweet screenshot

Tweet screenshot
Tweet screenshot

In reality, Trump requested an event permit for 3,500 people, according to The New York Times. On Thursday, 3,400 tickets had been issued for the rally, according to NYPD statements made to Raw Story. How many ticket holders showed up is unclear, but according to live aerial shots from ABC, Trump’s rally was confined to just one area of the palatial park: the amphitheater.

Tweet screenshot with photo of crowd size (not a huge crowd)

Conservatives’ claims of 25,000 showing out in the Bronx is roughly 30 times what reality depicts of around 800 people in Crotona Park’s amphitheater, with a few hundred hanging around past the gates. For comparison, Waldo Stadium in Kalamazoo fits 30,000 people—as noted by a crowd-size visualizer blog this reporter has often referred to when people violently inflate their numbers.

Were 25,000 people to have shown up in the Bronx, tightly packed, they would have occupied 13.8 baseball diamonds. With room to move around, a crowd that big would have occupied 30.8 baseball diamonds. But aerial visuals indicate Trump supporters on Thursday left the baseball field–size amphitheater less than a quarter full, roughly the size of one baseball diamond—or around 800 people.

MAGA Feud in Central New Jersey Ends in Local Official’s Arrest

Yard signs: check. Apple AirTags: check. Let the sting operation proceed!

Hot air balloons rise over a field in Readington, NJ.
Eduardo MunozAlvarez/VIEWpress/Corbis/Getty Images
Readington, New Jersey: home of an annual balloon festival and some impressive Republican infighting

An amateur sting operation in a bitter feud between Republicans in a small town in central New Jersey has now resulted in the arrest of a local councilman.

The hustle, reports the New Jersey Globe, was organized and planned by a growing cohort of MAGA Republicans in Readington Township. Frustrated by the increasingly routine disappearances of their political placards, they decided to plant six repurposed boards from the district’s 2022 House race as bait, pinning them with Apple AirTags before planting them next to a group of signs supporting a pair of moderate conservatives running for Readington mayor.

The signs were then stolen, and the AirTags led the Donald Trump–aligned cohort to an unexpected location: the home of committeeman John Albanese.

Albanese, a member of the town’s Republican old guard and a former Readington mayor himself, was arrested May 17 and charged with “unlawfully taking or exercising control over certain moveable property,” according to a summons issued by Patrolman Brandon Griffiths.

Incumbent Mayor Adam Mueller and Committee Member Juergen Huelsebusch, both aligned with the town’s new conservative wing, issued a joint statement denouncing Alabanese’s alleged behavior. “The arrest of Committeeman Albanese, an elected official and former Mayor, is deeply troubling and indefensible,” the pair told the Globe. “Given the considerable damage and embarrassment this has caused to Readington Township and the Republican Party, we call for his immediate resignation from all elected offices. This is a necessary step to begin restoring trust and integrity within our community.”

Still, the election boards weren’t exactly the MAGA cohort’s property to be stolen. Originally, the House district signs belonged to the campaign for Representative Thomas Kean Jr., though the backs of the signs had since been marked as “Property of Readington GOP,” according to the Globe.

A spokesman for the Kean campaign declined to comment to the local paper, though the freshman lawmaker is backing Huelsebusch and Mueller.

Trump Has a New V.P. Contender—and He’s the Worst of Them All

Donald Trump’s shortlist for his potential running nightmare was already bad. It just turned into a nightmare.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

The latest addition to Donald Trump’s horror show of vice presidential candidates is Senator Tom Cotton, The New York Times reports.

Trump reportedly thinks the Arkansas senator is a reliable communicator, and likes the fact that Cotton is a military veteran with undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard.

Cotton told Fox News on Monday that Trump has not discussed the vice presidency with him, and the two only discussed what the former president needs to do to be elected a second time.

“When we do talk, we talk about what it’s going to take to win this election in November—to elect President Trump to another term in the White House and elect a Republican Congress, so we can begin to repair the damage that Joe Biden’s presidency has inflicted on this country,” Cotton said.

Cotton may be on Trump’s shortlist for a different reason: his foreign policy hawkishness and itchy trigger finger.

Even before his political career began, he called for American journalists to be jailed for reporting on classified information. After becoming senator, he made a name for himself by constantly calling on the United States to attack Iran. But he’s also called for a brutal use of force domestically as well. In 2020, the Arkansas senator infamously called for invoking the Insurrection Act and sending in federal troops to quell Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Most recently, he again called for troops to be deployed against protesters, this time against demonstrators who oppose Israel’s brutal massacre in Gaza, which he continues to cheer on.

This year, he’s also made headlines for badgering TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew in a racist onslaught of questions about Chew’s background, repeatedly asking if the social media executive was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and ignoring Chew’s assertion that he was Singaporean.

To many Republicans in today’s Trump-led GOP, these disturbing stances are welcomed, not rejected. The question is whether the Republican presidential nominee thinks Cotton and his record would help him return to the White House.

Trump Proudly Accepts Endorsements From Rappers Charged With Murder

Donald Trump invited some shocking guests to join him on stage at his Bronx rally.

Donald Trump stands at a lectern on stage, splays his hands out and smiles. A few heads in a crowd (out of focus) are below him.
Steven Ferdman/GC Images

Criminals of a feather flocked together on Thursday as Trump hosted two Brooklyn rappers out on bail for murder conspiracy during a campaign rally in the Bronx.

Rappers Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow were indicted in 2023, alongside some 30 other people, as part of a massive investigation into two rival Brooklyn gangs. Sheff G—real name Michael Williams—allegedly used his accomplishments to help fund widespread violence. According to the New York Daily News, Williams was released on a $150,000 cash or $1 million bond in April after being charged with conspiracy, multiple murder counts, criminal possession of a weapon, assault with a weapon, and 12 shootings. Williams’s lackey Sleepy Hallow—real name Tegan Chambers—was released with a $200,000 cash or $150,000 bond bail for conspiracy charges.

Trump proudly brought the rappers on stage with him to give remarks to the red behatted crowd on Thursday. Williams told the crowd, “They’re always going to whisper the accomplishments and shout your failures. Trump gonna shout the wins for all of us.”

Chambers kept it even more brief and simply shouted, “Make America Great Again.”

As the duo departed and before Trump resumed making promises to “turn New York City around,” Trump noted that he wants teeth grills similar to Sheff G’s, according to reporting from Daily News reporter Chris Sommerfeldt.

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It’s unclear how the duo connected with the Trump campaign or why the Trump campaign felt it was a wise move to host a man accused, per the Brooklyn district attorney, of “using his fame and fortune to elevate gang violence in Brooklyn.”

Potential Trump V.P. Dodges Simple Question on Dangerous Trump Lie

Byron Donalds refused to answer a question on the merits of Donald Trump’s latest conspiracy theory.

Donald Trump speaks and looks off camera
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Representative Byron Donalds won’t answer a simple question on whether he thinks the FBI wanted to assassinate Donald Trump while searching his estate for classified documents.

The contender for vice president kept dodging CNN’s Abby Phillip Thursday night when she tried to get a straight answer out of him regarding the conspiracy theory.

“Congressman, I just want to note that you are not responding to a very simple question about a conspiracy theory that you voiced,” Phillip said, at times talking over Donalds.

“What conspiracy theory?” Donalds replied, sounding clueless.

“That the FBI, by having on a document that they are authorized to use deadly force, was trying to harm or assassinate Donald Trump,” Phillip replied. “That is false. Will you acknowledge that?”

“Can I be very clear with you?” Donalds asked, talking over Phillip, who tried in vain to get him to acknowledge the truth of the situation. “I’m not sure what Merrick Garland is trying to do these days, because it is clear that the Department of Justice is being weaponized against Donald Trump.”

Phillip and Donalds argued throughout the rest of the interview, with Donalds spending more than three minutes trying to steer their discussion back to his assertion that the Justice Department is being weaponized, and Phillip trying to pin down the congressman on how there was no plot to kill Trump, as the former president claimed on a Truth Social post earlier this week.

A former president claiming their successor tried to kill them is unprecedented, according to The Washington Post. The FBI has already testified that it chose to search Mar-a-Lago on a day that Trump would not be there in order to prevent any conflict. The FBI and Merrick Garland each confirmed that standard procedure for searches includes a deadly-force policy and that the same policy was used when President Biden’s homes were searched for classified documents.

Donalds and other Trump allies are all seizing upon this conspiracy theory to distract from the recent news that more classified documents were found in Trump’s bedroom at Mar-a-Lago four months after the FBI’s initial search. Meanwhile, the actual case against Trump remains in limbo thanks to Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon’s indefinite stay.