Former Associated Press photojournalist on the ground at Kamala Harris rally in Detroit says images are real

Donald Trump has openly accused Vice President Kamala Harris of using AI to generate images of the large supportive crowd that met her in Detroit recently. 

Posting on his self-owned social media platform Truth Social on Sunday, Trump wrote:

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. 

“She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING - And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”

Trump doubled down on this theory despite numerous citizens sharing images and videos of the crowd showing thousands of attendees, as well as the press photographers capturing almost every angle of the crowd.

Getty photographer Andrew Harnik was at the event, who has previously worked with the Associated Press and has been recognized by the White House News Photographers Association for the past 16 years. He was awarded the Political Photograph of the Year in 2012, and again in 2017.

Speaking to the Daily Beast, Harnik said the crowd was “significantly large enough,” and that “It was a large crowd, and the pictures that I took that are on the Getty website speak to that.

Trump is seemingly still angry at having to manipulate photographs of his own inauguration crowd in 2017. 

Exclusive documents released by the Guardian newspaper in 2018 allegedly proved that a government photographer at the time edited official images of Trump’s inauguration.

They seemed to show that the photographer had attempted to make the crowds appear bigger by cropping out the empty space “where the crowd ended” for photos requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency. This was after reports he was angered that images of his crowd appeared much smaller than Obama’s in 2009. 

Trump’s rhetoric further encouraged the blossoming right-wing conspiracy theory, which seemingly coincided with far-right filmmaker and supporter of Trump’s ‘win’ in the 2020 election Dinesh D’Souza . They asserted that it was a fake crowd, posting a picture of Air Force Two.

“Check the reflection in the plane,” he wrote, “Does this look like a real picture to you?”

Harnik explained to the Daily Beast that he used a zoom lens, allowing him to capture high quality images of the entire event without leaving his vantage point. He also said that a zoom lens can sometimes give images a “flat” look, and make a subject appear closer, in this instance a plane to a crowd.

“This plane is actually a pretty far distance from the crowd,” he added.

Take a look at our guides to the best standard zoom lenses, the best telephoto lenses, and the best camera for professionals.