On Monday, Fox News published a report titled: “Trump draws massive crowd of at least 50K in small South Carolina town of 3,400: police.”
The article covered former President Donald Trump’s rally in Pickens, South Carolina, on Saturday, which, according to the police chief of the town, drew a crowd of over 50,000 Trump supporters to the tiny town.
But community note contributors on Twitter weren’t willing to accept that the former president was still able to draw crowds of this size.
But it turns out the fact-checkers were doing a little less “fact-checking” and a little more “fact manipulation.”
The fact-checkers cited an article from Greenville News to support their community note.
The relevant section cited read:
“Pre-rally estimates of 10,000 to 30,000 were made. During his remarks, Trump claimed the turnout was 75,000. Beach said he needed to get an accurate count from the Secret Service before providing a final number. Around 11 am, a secret service agent told the News there are 5,000 inside the gate and approximately 10,000 still in line.”
With some convenient cherry-picking, the fact-checkers used the estimated 5,000 people inside plus the 10,000 still in line mentioned by the Secret Service agent and came up with a grand total of 15,000 people at the rally.
An impressive math feat.
What they did not mention, however, is that that estimate was made at 11 o’clock in the morning. Trump’s plane hadn’t even landed at that point, according to Politico.