The crowds! - Part 3

Manchester Deputy Fire Marshal Mitchell Cady told DailyMail.com that Trump was right – that his crowd numbered 'just over 11,500.'

Calling the president's tweet 'a topic of discussion around here,' Cady revealed that 'the arena staff said Elton John was around 11,300' in April 2004.

  Daily Mail

I'm willing to call it even, but to suggest that an estimate within 200 people over that capacity is conclusive evidence is just BS. Also, surely it's not the same arena staff in 2004 as 2019. Remember the adage: It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.

Cady said that while his department's final inside crowd count of 11,500 is not higher than the number of Trump audience members allowed in the arena, it might be a slight under-estimate.

'Had some more snuck in during the period when we're trying to assess the situation and get the door closed, when we're trying to get everyone through the mags, then maybe it's "11,500-plus",' he said.

'Mags' is short for magnetometers, the walk-through metal detectors that U.S. Secret Service sets up to screen attendees of presidential events.

[...]

Cady also said his office estimated that at least 8,000 people stood outside the arena in an overflow crowd area, watching the rally on jumbo TV screens.

[...]

An official at the SNHU Arena who declined to be named, saying, 'You're not going to get me involved in all this political fighting,' said Friday that empty 'nosebleed seats' would have been offset 'by all the people cramming themselves into the standing-room space on the arena floor.'

Then, I guess they WERE going to get him involved.

'It's not like they couldn't fill the place.'

I'll buy that. But Trump brings all this shit on himself by constantly pointing to and exaggerating the size of his crowds.

Trump has consistently come under fire for overstating the size of his rally crowds, and has claimed to break a rock star's attendance record at least once before.

Before the future president arrived at a February 3, 2016 campaign rally in Little Rock Arkansas, a man Trump later identified as the fire marshal announced on stage that the crowd had broken a record set by ZZ Top in 1974.

'In 1974 we had ZZ Top here and we set our all-time record of 11,451,' Ralph Shoptaw said on stage. 'I have just been informed that we have broken that record. Over 11,500. So welcome, Mr. Trump to Barton Coliseum.'

That proved to be untrue: Photos and video shot during Trump's speech showed the coliseum sparsely populated. Local journalists estimated the crowd size at fewer than 6,000.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.