President Trump has spent the last three years hammering the press for downplaying crowd sizes at his rallies. Of his many grievances with the media, this is perhaps Trump’s most reliably recurrent. Yet on Tuesday, a New York Times report on Trump’s rally in Nashville dramatically undershot attendance at the event, missing the mark by more than 400 percent.
The paper corrected its error on Wednesday, writing, “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.”
That came after Trump blasted the Times on Twitter: “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. They are very dishonest people who don’t ‘get’ me, and never did!”
Mistakes happen, and the Times handled this one professionally. Reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis tweeted, “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.”
That’s the right move, and commendably honest. But the question remains of how 5,500 people looks anything like 1,000.
