Megyn Kelly slams Trump's 'stupid' AI claims about Harris' rally crowd, tells him to 'focus on border'
WASHINGTON, DC: Megyn Kelly slammed Donald Trump for obsessing over the crowd size at Kamala Harris' August 7 Detroit airport rally, saying his claims that it was faked are "so stupid."
Sharing a picture of the crowd gathered outside Air Force Two, the vice president's official plane, the former president had floated the theory that it was AI-generated on his Truth Social platform.
This was later debunked by the photographer who took the picture and by experts. Moreover, video footage of the event clearly shows thousands of people filling the Detroit Metro Airport hangar to meet Harris.
Megyn Kelly criticizes Donald Trump's false AI claims about Kamala Harris' rally crowd
Referring to Donald Trump's AI claims, Megyn Kelly said, "So unsmart. So dumb... He's claiming that the crowds, the big crowds outside of [Harris'] airplane and elsewhere are AI-generated, and it's just, there's just no proof of that."
She went on, "It was a conspiracy theory somebody started," adding that the GOP presidential nominee should pay more attention to his campaign and policies. "Just focus on the damn border!" exclaimed Kelly.
"If Trump spends more time complaining about depictions of the crowd size at Kamala Harris rallies, that's gonna really seal the deal for him," stated the former Fox News host, adding sarcastically, "That's gonna get the swing state voters!"
Kelly also pointed out, "There were all these other pictures from people who were actually there showed the huge… like are they all in on it? Like, everyone who showed up got an AI filter that they put on? So stupid."
Scenes from the @KamalaHarris rally in metro Detroit on Wednesday. Amazing to see so many @UAW members cheering together, @ShawnFainUAW rev up the crowd, Air Force 2 roll up, and an audience overflowing out of a huge aircraft hanger. pic.twitter.com/oqoFzbUhcj
— UAW Archivist (@UAW_Archivist) August 9, 2024
Megyn Kelly says it's time for Donald Trump's team to deal with reality as Kamala Harris leads polls
Megyn Kelly's comments came after she started her politics panel show by reading off recent polls, saying they showed that things "are not going in the right direction for Team Trump."
She dismissed claims that it was just down to the polls' oversampling of Democrats, arguing that it's "across the board." "He's fallen in left-leaning polls, he's fallen in right-leaning polls," said the conservative commentator, further noting, "This is reality, and the Trump team needs to deal with reality if it wants to win."
The Washington Post's latest polling average suggests that the race has effectively reversed itself since Harris replaced Joe Biden on the Democrat ticket.
Compared to July 21—the day the POTUS dropped out of the race—Harris has gained two percentage points nationally, meaning she leads on her Republican rival as it stands.
Kamala Harris' team blasted Donald Trump over his false AI claims
The Harris campaign jumped on Donald Trump's AI claims, saying it is a sign of the former president's growing desperation as he sees them getting ahead in the polls.
Trump reshared a picture of the airport scene on August 11, claiming on his Truth Social platform that Harris had "AI'd it." He wrote, "Look, we caught her with a fake 'crowd'. There was nobody there!"
Kamala HQ shared the post on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption, "1) This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan. 2) Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week... Low energy?"
1) This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 11, 2024
2) Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week... Low energy? pic.twitter.com/VgTfoMAcuk
Fact-checkers confirmed Kamala Harris' Detroit airport rally crowd photos are genuine
Fact check website Snopes said that the Winston AI Detector determined the image was "96 percent human"—meaning that it was "likely photographed by someone and not created using an AI-generation tool."
If anything, Snopes' findings indicate that "it's possible that [the photograph's] lighting, shadows or filtering was digitally manipulated" but not the photo as a whole.
Spectrum News has also determined that "the crowd did in fact exist, and the rally was attended by thousands of people, many of whom posted their own pictures and videos of the event, which was also live-streamed by dozens of news channels and attended by a slew of prominent politicians."
It went on to quote Michigan outlet MLive, which said, "About 15,000 people filled the hangar, the crowd spilling out onto the tarmac."
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