Donald Trump is facing the harsh reality of his dwindling fanbase at campaign rallies across the country—and Jimmy Fallon isn’t making it any easier for him.
On Tuesday night, the late-night host turned his attention to the president’s midterm rallies as the GOP scrambles to win over voters before the midterms on Nov. 3. According to The New York Times and several other outlets, the 80-year-old has been met with a lukewarm response and empty seats at these events, which have been held in deep-red states. These reports have, unsurprisingly, enraged Trump.
“Trump is now saying that reporters from The New York Times and other media outlets should be arrested over their coverage of his rallies. Reporters aren’t worried,” began Fallon. “They’re like, ‘If we can sit through a two-hour Trump speech, we can handle prison. Eh, we’re good.’”
“Trump’s mad because reporters said his Ohio rally was small. Well, they didn’t technically say it was small,” he continued.
The Tonight Show host then supplied his own four-letter word for Trump’s embarrassing crowds.
“They just said it’s ‘cute,’” he mocked.
The president became enraged about the crowd turnouts he has seen, turning to Truth Social to post his own counterarguments. “The Fake News New York Times ‘reported’ on my Great, PACKED Rally in Ohio that, ‘the place was not full. Some upper sections were almost completely empty,’” the president wrote of the paper’s Saturday report—which was actually about his rally in Alabama, not Ohio.
Stories about his continuously empty crowds followed throughout the weekend.
According to the Times’ Katie Rogers, “several areas of an upper deck were empty” at the event at Butler High School in Vandalia, Ohio. Rogers added that his midterm event in Alabama had seen “swaths of empty seats.”
Trump, however, insisted that his rally was “MAXED OUT” and that his events are “probably more crowded than ever.”
The president took his fury further by suggesting that reporters be arrested for their coverage. “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country,” he wrote on Truth Social.
His latest threat to the press comes just weeks after he attempted an unprecedented White House ban against several news organizations.
