The Tennessee Twitter account known as @TEN_GOP is being called out for spreading fake news about President Donald Trump’s crowd size for his rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, August 22. As reported by AZ Central , Trump supporters and Tennessee Republicans began sharing an image which they claimed was the massive crowd outside of President Trump’s rally in Phoenix, all clamoring to get into Trump’s rally. The problem was that the interwebs make it easy to right click on a photo and choose “Search Google for Image.” In doing so, the photo was discovered on Attitude Sports , clearly showing it was a photo from 2016, and not from Trump’s rally in 2017.
Eventually, the Twitter account that describes itself as the “Unofficial Twitter of Tennessee Republicans,” responsible for “Covering breaking news, national politics, foreign policy and more,” deleted the tweet, but not before people could grab screenshots and start making fun of its claims that there was a “massive crowd waiting outside for the Trump rally in Phoenix!” The original tweet, as seen on AZ Central , went on to claim that the media reports everybody hates Trump. “I’m confused,” the tweet went on to claim, adding the #PhoenixRally hashtag. However, Twitter users weren’t confused — at least not those who didn’t take it as the gospel truth and retweet the photo.
The fake photo of the “ massive crowd waiting outside for the Trump rally in Phoenix” is being spread around Facebook by some folks who don’t know the photo is actually a photo of the Cleveland Cavaliers rally. Adding comments like “for all you haters” and the like, certain Trump supporters are using the photo as some kind of proof of Trump’s popularity. The “anti-Trump crowd vs. pro-Trump crowd” photo was also posted to the Tennessee unofficial GOP Twitter account, using the Cavs rally photo as the “pro-Trump crowd.”
Instead of being a photo from Phoenix — AZ Central quipped “Who really thought Phoenix had that much green?” — the photo was captured from above the intersection of St. Claire Ave. and Ninth Street in downtown Cleveland. Although the Twitter account claims no affiliation with the Tennessee Republican Party, the image was retweeted and liked nearly 2,000 times in total prior to it being deleted. And while President Donald Trump claimed the media never shows his crowds unless there’s some kind of “anarchist” there, the above Associated Press photo at the top shows Mr. Trump arriving at a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center, on Tuesday, August 22.
[Featured Image by Alex Brandon/AP Images]
