Mary Trump explained on Thursday why reported “shrinking” crowd sizes and low attendances at some of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign rallies will infuriate the former president and Republican 2024 front-runner.
It’s “always been a trigger for Donald,” the clinical psychologist, who’s Donald Trump’s niece, wrote in the latest installment of her Substack newsletter.
A key example is Trump’s repeated lies about the size of the audience at his inauguration in January 2017, which were at the time backed by his White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, who falsely claimed it was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe” when it clearly wasn’t. It was one of the first untruths pushed by Trump, who went on to tell many during his time in office.
“Crowd size is one of the key ways Donald measures success,” wrote Mary Trump.
“Small turnout, muted responses, and louder hecklers challenge him and stress him in a way few other things can,” she added. “Huge crowds, and their violent energy, motivate him. They were a crutch. Without them, he loses an important method of deploying his message, and momentum.”
Mary Trump has become one of her uncle’s fiercest critics. In 2020, she released her tell-all memoir, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” which explored the Trump family’s dynamics and how they contributed to who Donald Trump became.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article referred to Trump’s inauguration in January 2021. It was 2017.