Donald Trump is facing ridicule after asserting that the audience at his debate with Kamala Harris “went crazy” for him, despite there being no live audience at the event.
The former president, known for exaggerating crowd sizes—once claiming he outdrew Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington—took his embellishments to a new level by inventing an audience altogether.
During a recent appearance on Fox News, Trump criticized the moderators from ABC News, claiming they corrected him “practically” every time he spoke, while not doing the same for Harris. He then referred to the nonexistent audience, stating, “And the audience was absolutely– they went crazy.”
“They didn’t correct her once. And they corrected me, everything I said, practically. I think nine times or 11 times,” he told host Greg Gutfeld.
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Trump then referred to the nonexistent audience.
“And the audience was absolutely– they went crazy,” he said.
However, the debate on September 10 was conducted without a live audience, adhering to strict rules including switched-off microphones for candidates not speaking and a ban on earpieces.
Social media erupted in response to Trump’s comments. One user on X pointedly asked, “Um… er… what audience?” Others speculated about Trump’s mental state, with one commenter calling him “delusional, senile.”
Trump also claimed impressive TV ratings for the debate, stating, “We had 75 million people watching, something like that.” It remains unclear if he was conflating this viewership with the imaginary audience he described.
Despite the mixed reviews from polls and even members of his own party, Trump insisted he had a “great debate,” maintaining, “I walked off, I said: ‘That was a great debate, I loved it.’”
Polling data revealed a different story, with a CNN snap poll showing that 63 percent of registered voters believed Harris had won the debate, compared to only 37 percent who thought Trump had prevailed.
Even some of his closest GOP allies acknowledged that Harris came out on top.
“Make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night,” Brit Hume said on Fox News at the time. “We heard so many of the old grievances that we long thought that Trump had learned were not winners, politically,” he added.
In a separate anecdote during the Gutfeld! segment, Trump recounted a call from Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, claiming Walz asked him to assure the public they were friends. However, a recently surfaced phone call contradicts Trump’s version of these events.
Overall, Trump’s insistence on an enthusiastic audience has drawn both confusion and mockery, leaving many questioning his grip on reality.
Watch the clip below:
OMG. Trump
Just said that the audience at the debate went “absolutely crazy” when the moderators fact-checked him.
There’s one problem: There was no audience at the debate. pic.twitter.com/UEJXfuCMWP
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 19, 2024
