Jimmy Kimmel has found the perfect “metaphor” for Donald Trump’s presidency in footage from the Republicans’ midterm convention.
Trump, 80, and his party are attempting to win over disillusioned voters before November’s midterms. These efforts culminated in a “clown show” GOP convention in Dallas, Texas, where the president spoke for a whopping 106 minutes and made a series of bizarre remarks, including a bribe to every adult in the United States.
The rambling speech was given to a partly empty stadium at the American Airlines Center. But Trump insisted the convention was packed, as Kimmel pointed out.
“Not only is this packed, but you have an equal number of people standing outside... We have an amazing response. They love our party. They love what we’re doing,” Trump told the audience.
“Nobody has left,” he said on several occasions. He then predicted that reporters would say that “Trump lost his audience.”
“See that man up there? He’s leaving for the bathroom. They’ll take a picture of his seat while he’s gone. Look at the seat. They’ll have a reporter say Trump lost his audience,” the president said. “So, please, if you don’t mind, don’t anybody go to the bathroom.”
On social media, too, the president asserted multiple times that the stadium was “packed” and described the event as “a major, sold-out hit, far bigger, better, and more important than anyone thought possible.” He also said, with no evidence, that he drew a larger crowd than the NFL season opener.
But news reports suggested otherwise. The Daily Beast reporters spotted several empty sections across the stands at the event. The Wall Street Journal described “empty seats...in the upper decks.” NBC said “lots of folks have left the arena” as the president droned on. Reuters, too, reported that “large stretches of the side sections remain sparsely filled.”
Kimmel didn’t have to look much further than the humiliating live news coverage of Trump’s keynote address.
“I mean, come on. Could there be a better metaphor for this presidency than him bragging about the size of his crowd to a bunch of empty seats? I don’t think so,” quipped the ABC host.
The Trump nemesis then theorized that Trump has no reason to “tell the truth” because his “trembling flunkies” flock to affirm his delusions. Kimmel played several clips of MAGA mouthpieces, including Fox News’s Rob Finnerty and Jesse Watters, speaking about how “packed” and “full” the venue was.
The Republican National Committee also pushed back against widespread reports about visibly empty crowds. “President Trump packed an arena, and the energy in the room was electric,” Danielle Alvarez, RNC senior adviser, told The Wall Street Journal.
Kimmel, like most, isn’t buying it.
“When does the kid come out and inform the emperor that he has no clothes?” he continued. “That arena was as empty as a Waymo.”
