Donald Trump Revives ‘Pocahontas’ Slur Against Elizabeth Warren, Claims Media Is Lying About Her Large Crowds
Donald Trump has revived his “Pocahontas” slur against Elizabeth Warren in a tweet complaining about the media coverage of her large rally crowds.
The president took to Twitter to accuse the media of lying about Warren’s enthusiastic following, claiming without evidence that they are inflating the size of the crowds that the Massachusetts senator has attracted in recent weeks.
“They do stories so big on Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren’s crowd sizes, adding many more people than are actually there, and yet my crowds, which are far bigger, get no coverage at all. Fake News!” Trump claimed on Twitter.
The size of crowds that Donald Trump attracts at campaign rallies has actually been reported on a regular basis, especially as Trump has been accused of making unfounded and often false claims about the number of people at his rallies. The Washington Post noted in a report last year that Trump has a propensity for appearing to invent numbers for the people in attendance, sometimes wildly off from objective estimates and at times significantly larger than the capacity for the areas in which his rallies are held.
As the report noted, these claims are often easily disproven.
“For example, Trump claimed 50,000 people were outside a rally in Houston because they couldn’t get in, but the city’s police chief said the number was much lower: 3,000. In Cleveland, Trump claimed ‘thousands’ of people were outside because the venue was packed,” the report noted. “But Twitter users at the event posted evidence that Trump didn’t fill the venue and that only a handful of people were milling around in the parking lot.”
Elizabeth Warren has been attracting some significant crowds of her own in recent weeks. As Vanity Fair reported, she recently drew 12,000 to a rally in Minnesota and another 15,000 in Seattle.
The sharp increase in crowd sizes corresponds to a surge in the polls for the 2020 Democratic candidate. She has moved into a lead in recent polls, and FiveThirtyEight noted that she has the highest favorability of any candidate in the race. A total of 68 percent of people said they have a favorable view of Warren, compared to 15 percent who view her unfavorably, the report noted.
Trump complains about media coverage of Warren's crowd sizes https://t.co/1TKEnIyvfS pic.twitter.com/EWIdEQQc5E
— The Hill (@thehill) August 27, 2019
With the surge in polling, Elizabeth Warren has also become a more frequent target of Donald Trump. Shortly after a Fox News poll earlier this month showed that Trump was losing to Warren by a seven-point margin in hypothetical 2020 matchups, the president told reporters that he may decide to revive the “Pocahontas” slur against Warren, mocking her distant Native American heritage.
