Vice President JD Vance’s team went above and beyond to hide the reality of an event he hosted in Georgia.
Vance posted a sizzle reel from his trip to Atlanta on social media, featuring footage from a Turning Point USA event he headlined at the University of Georgia and quoting his speech from the event.
“You are the master of your own destiny,” Vance posted on X. Never give up on yourself and never believe that you’re a victim of circumstances...no matter what hand you were dealt, you have the responsibility to play as well as you can.”
The video features footage from Vance’s trip to Georgia with a voiceover of Vance speaking during the event, including the quote featured in his X post.
The footage from the event featured in the video obscures the fact that it had an incredibly low attendance, with one reporter estimating that Athens’ Akins Ford Arena was less than 25 percent full.
“Turning Point USA seems to have misestimated crowd size for Vance,” MS NOW reporter Jake Traylor wrote on X. “Akins Ford Arena less than 25% filled for the vice president.”
A video Traylor posted, as well as videos shared by other attendees, show numerous empty seats throughout the arena, with attendees concentrated on the floor.
A report from the Associated Press described the arena as being “mostly empty,” noting that instead of youthful energy, Vance was met with “awkward questions and unusually sharp criticism.”
Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia, shared footage from the event on X, and told the Daily Beast that he estimated that approximately 1,200 people were in attendance.
“The student section on floor was 1,000 chairs and they didn’t fill - maybe 900,” Boedy said. “And the others were definitely no more than 300.”
The venue has a capacity of more than 8,000. Tickets to the event were free and available on a first-come, first-served basis for those who had registered online beforehand.
The Daily Beast has contacted representatives for Vance for comment.
Of the people in attendance, not all seemed to be enthusiastic supporters of Vance or his boss, with one attendee interviewed by AP taking issue with President Donald Trump’s decision to depict himself as Jesus Christ.
“I did vote for Trump. I am not a Trump supporter anymore,” Joseph Bercher told the outlet, adding that the president “sees himself as like a demagogue or someone to be worshipped.”
Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, had attempted to brush off the president’s post as a joke that “a lot of people weren’t understanding.” He also echoed the president’s argument that Pope Leo XIV should refrain from commenting on foreign affairs.
“It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic Church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” Vance said in a Fox News interview.
At Tuesday’s event, Vance tempered his tone slightly, telling Turning Point executive Andrew Kolvet that he welcomes the pope’s comments, which have focused on calling for an end to the war in Iran, even if he disagrees with them.
“At the very least, it invites conversation,” he added, before noting that “it’s very important for the pope to be careful” when mixing global affairs and theology.
