People watch a fireworks display at a Fourth of July rally featuring U.S. President Donald Trump, marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 5, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump began his big speech on Independence Day by announcing his massive crowd size, saying that before the rain-out, the crowd reached 375,000. Later on Truth Social, he bragged that it was 422,000. After the rain, Trump claimed the crowd had dwindled to 150,000. Now reality has come knocking.
A chat between The New Republic's Greg Sargent and senior editor Alex Shephard explained that the president continues to cover for slumping enthusiasm, even from his own supporters.
"I mean, there have been a lot of ridiculous Trump crowd-size claims, but I think this is one of the more brazen ones," explained Shephard for "The Daily Blast" podcast. "The VIP section of this speech wasn’t even full. It was half full by the middle of the speech. People that love Trump and that need things from Trump weren’t willing to stay the entire time."
The event ultimately got rained out, with storms moving through with torrential downpours and powerful winds. Tourists there for the event were forced to shelter in the museum and agency lobbies nearby. When the storms were over, people were allowed to come back into the event, but with the now two-hour delay, it meant the fireworks weren't going off until after 10:30.
"The weather was awful, but I think mostly people did not want to sit through what Trump had promised to be a very long speech. It wasn’t actually that long — I think it was like 30, 35 minutes," said Shepard. "But it was exactly what you would expect. It was this kind of endless recitation of the familiar grievances, with a few kind of new half-baked insults thrown in."
The whole ordeal was indicative of where Trump is right now, he continued.
"Somebody who’s just almost bored, I think, with it, but who has no real argument to make to the American people and is still just kind of falling back on these very, very tired arguments," he added.
Sargent recalled Trump's long history of claiming his crowds were "the biggest" or "the best." He's claimed, “I have 10 times, 20 times, 30 times the crowd size" or "hundreds of thousands." But the reality is that videos and photos show a different story.
Shephard said that the ordeal began with the "Great American State Fair," which had lackluster attendance. The original event that was to be hosted by the bipartisan committee "America 250" was ultimately taken over by Trump's own personal group "Freedom 250" and the "festival of festivals" was turned into what Trump wanted to be a kind of World's Fair kind of event.
"And I think that again, like, the president can be furious about this as much as he wants, but it’s just another example of him living in this total fantasy world. It’s like when he posts about polls where seventy percent of the people love him. It’s just absurd," said Shephard.
He said that it's indicative of Trump working harder to manufacture reality.
"He’s a disciple of the power of positive thinking," explained Shephard. "He believes he can just kind of manipulate reality by saying things, and that by the time people correct him, it’ll be too late. But I think what we’ve seen again and again, especially since the start of this year, is that he’s just totally lost that ability, right? He can just say this stuff and people just ignore it. It doesn’t matter anymore."