President Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd's applause during a Republican campaign rally Thursday, May 10, 2018, in Elkhart, Ind. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
The New York Times botched the crowd size for Trump’s Tuesday night rally in Tennessee, overlooking 4,500 attendees before correcting the article when the president called out the mistake on Twitter.
The Times reported that 1,000 people attended Trump’s rally, but the local fire marshal’s office estimated that roughly 5,500 supporters were actually in the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, where Trump supported GOP Senate hopeful Marsha Blackburn.
Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to mock The Gray Lady for the crowd size error.
“The Failing and Corrupt @nytimes estimated the crowd last night at “1000 people,” when in fact it was many times that number - and the arena was rockin’. This is the way they demean and disparage,” Trump wrote. “They are very dishonest people who don’t ‘get’ me, and never did!”
The Nashville Tennessean reported the Trump campaign suggested the number of attendees was closer to 8,000.
The Times reporter who wrote the story admitted to simply underestimating the crowd size and tweeted that Trump’s claim of more was correct.
“President @realDonaldTrump is correct about his crowd last night. My estimate was way off, and we have corrected our story to reflect the fire marshal’s estimate of 5,500 people. When we get it wrong, we say so,” Times reporter Julie Davis responded.
Trump slammed Democratic leaders at the Nashville rally, labeling former Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat in the running to replace retiring Sen. Bob Corker, as an “absolute total tool of Chuck Schumer and, of course, the MS-13 lover Nancy Pelosi.”
Trump, who defended labeling members of the MS-13 gang as “animals,” hit the House minority leader for taking exception with the classification. “We are all God’s children,” Pelosi argued in response last week.
Trump won Tennessee with more than 60 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential election. The Times downplaying the impressive turnout isn’t the first time that crowd size has made news during the Trump administration.
Trump and his surrogates famously battled reporters over the crowd size of his Inauguration Day ceremony. Then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer took the podium during his first White House news conference to defend the crowd size.
Trump has mocked the Times on a regular basis, often referring to the paper as “failing.” Earlier this week New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein was among several members of the mainstream media to incorrectly share Obama-era pictures of children sleeping in enclosed cages while giving the impression they were taken during the Trump administration.
Silverstein, who blamed the mistake on being distracted by his family, was widely criticized for the blunder.
The Times updated its online story about Tuesday’s rally with the following correction: “An earlier version of this article cited an incorrect figure for the number of people attending President Trump’s rally. While no exact figure is available, the fire marshal’s office estimated that approximately 5,500 people attended the rally, not about 1,000 people.”
Fox News’ Matt Richardson contributed to this report.
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