Donald Trump's Crowd Sizes Brutally Mocked: 'Only Hundreds'

A new video from Ron DeSantis's super PAC group has mocked Donald Trump for
low turnout to his campaign rallies.

Never Back Down, the DeSantis-aligned fundraising group, posted a video
sneering at Trump's claims that tens of thousands of people attend his
political rallies as he fights to become the Republican nominee for the
2024 election. The clip splices Trump's claims about crowd sizes with
numerous news segments showing the opposite, with empty bleachers and large
gaps in the crowds being shown. Many of the news segments say that only
hundreds are attending his rallies.

The former president has often said that tens of thousands, sometimes even
a million people, have attended events relating to him. Trump said that
over 1 million people attended his inauguration in January 2017, with his
Press Secretary Sean Spicer also saying at the time that it was "the
largest audience to ever witness an inauguration." These claims have been
disputed, and official figures for attendance are not available.

Never Back Down, the PAC associated with DeSantis's aims of becoming the
next president, has previously made jibes at Trump's expense. In a previous
video, the group has compared DeSantis's university credentials with
Trump's. It also boasted that the Florida governor was deployed to Iraq as
a legal counsel to a Navy SEAL commander, whereas his political rival does
not have any experience in the military or associated roles. Trump,
however, is the clear frontrunner in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential
nomination.

Never Back Down has taken on much of the DeSantis field operations,
handling voter outreach tasks typically handled by the campaign directly. A
PAC can raise unlimited funds of money from corporations, unlike an
official campaign group, but cannot give more than the federal limit
directly to candidates. Newsweek has contacted Never Back Down via email
for comment.

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However, a PAC can make independent expenditures relating to a campaign
that is not coordinated with the candidate it relates to. A PAC is also
barred from communicating with the official campaign about strategy and
research, but it is free to publish the information online or direct others
to do so.

However, Never Back Down has been credited with handling the day-to-day
elements of the Florida governor's campaign for the White House, according
to a report by Bloomberg. Election experts say that traditional campaign
activity for DeSantis has been offloaded onto the PAC. "What they're doing
is offloading what is traditionally campaign activity to the super PAC,"
Larry Noble, a former general counsel with the Federal Election Commission,
told Bloomberg. "To claim that it's done without coordination is
unbelievable."

Bloomberg has also said that Never Back Down has $96 million in its coffers
at the end of June this year. Comparatively, Trump's PAC had $30.8 million
in its reserves at the same time. Newsweek has not been able to verify
independently these figures.

Andrew Romeo, a DeSantis campaign spokesman, told Bloomberg that the
campaign was abiding by the rules: "We will continue to follow the law as
we maximize our resources by accepting special-guest invitations to bring
Ron DeSantis's message to reverse the decline of this country and lead our
Great American Comeback to as many voters as possible."

The video comes as DeSantis faces dwindling results in polls, despite his
direct competitor for the White House being mired a slew of legal battles
relating to corporate finances and election rigging accusations. A
University of North Florida study, published on November 7, shows the
Florida governor trailing Trump by 39 points, 60 percent to 21 percent,
among Republican voters in his state. In a straight head-to-head, Trump
holds a 59-29 percentage advantage, with 12 percent not supporting either
candidate.

Michael Binder, professor of political science at University of North
Florida (UNF) and director of its public opinion research lab, said of the
results in U.K. newspaper The Guardian: "Despite historically high approval
in the polls, Governor DeSantis losing steam in his home state doesn't bode
well for his national campaign. Even if you wipe out the rest of the
competition in a head-to-head, Trump leads DeSantis by 20 points."