Megyn Kelly slams Donald Trump’s ‘stupid’ theory that Kamala Harris’s airport hangar crowd was AI generated and tells him to ‘focus on the damn border’

Megyn Kelly has criticised Donald Trump for his alleged obsession with the size of the crowd at Kamala Harris’ airport rally, calling his claims that the rally was fake “so stupid”.

The conservative commentator criticized the former president for spreading a conspiracy theory after he claimed that a photo of supporters outside Air Force Two, the vice president’s official plane, was generated by artificial intelligence.

This was later debunked by the photographer behind the photo and experts, as well as by video footage of the event that clearly shows thousands of people filling the hangar at Detroit Metro Airport.

Kelly said on her radio show about the Republican candidate’s attacks on his Democratic rival: “So clumsy. So stupid… He claims that the crowd, the big crowd outside [Harris’] airplanes and other devices are generated by AI, and there is simply no evidence for that.’

“Somebody started a conspiracy theory,” she continued, adding that Trump should pay more attention to his campaign and policies. She exclaimed, “Just focus on the damn border!”

Thousands of Kamala Harris supporters gathered for a rally in Detroit last Wednesday

One of Kelly’s guests, libertarian Reason Magazine editor Matt Welch, argued that Trump will fail to win over voters unless he focuses on the issues that matter.

“If Trump spends more time complaining about the way the crowds at Kamala Harris’ rallies are portrayed, that’s really going to be a game changer for him,” he said sarcastically. “That’s going to appeal to swing state voters!”

Former Fox News host Kelly also questioned how the footage could have been faked, given how so much footage of the event was released.

“There were all these other photos of people who were actually there, who were the huge… like they’re all in on it?” she said. “Everybody who showed up had an AI filter that they put on it? So stupid.”

She made her comments after beginning her political panel discussion by reading out recent polls that showed things were “not going well for Team Trump.”

She rejected the claim that it was simply because the polls had too many Democrats, saying it was a “general problem.”

Supporters gathered on the platform outside the hangar, Air Force Two in the background attends a campaign rally with US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris

“He’s down in the left polls, he’s down in the right polls,” she said. “This is the reality, and the Trump team has to deal with reality if they want to win.”

This comes after one of the latest polls showed Harris as the current frontrunner in the neck-and-neck race for the White House.

The forecast is based on the Washington Post polling average, which shows the race has effectively flipped since Joe Biden was replaced by his vice president on the Democratic ticket.

Compared to July 21, the day President Biden withdrew from the race, Harris is up two percentage points nationally, meaning she is currently ahead of her Republican rival.

Harris’ campaign jumped on Trump’s false accusations, claiming they are a sign of the former president’s growing desperation as he sees himself rising in the polls.

Trump shared another photo of the scene on Sunday, claiming on his Truth Social platform that the high-definition image proved Harris had done it “through artificial intelligence.”

“Look, we caught her with a fake ‘crowd,'” he posted without any evidence. “There was no one there!”

Harris HQ shared the post on X with the caption, “This is a real photo of a crowd of 15,000 people outside Harris-Walz in Michigan.”

The magazine took another dig, adding: “Trump hasn’t campaigned in a swing state in over a week… Low energy?”

According to fact-checking website Snopes, the Winston AI Detector determined that the image was “96 percent human,” meaning the image was “likely photographed by someone and not created by an AI generation tool.”

At the very least, Snopes’ findings indicate that “it is possible that [the photograph’s] Exposure, shadows and filters were digitally manipulated, but not the photo as a whole.

Spectrum News also found that “the crowd was indeed present and the rally was attended by thousands of people, many of whom posted their own photos and videos of the event, which was also livestreamed by dozens of news outlets and was attended by a large number of high-profile politicians.”

The magazine then quoted Michigan media outlet MLive as saying, “About 15,000 people filled the hangar, with the crowd spilling onto the tarmac.”

Getty Images photographer Andrew Harnick defended his photo, telling The Daily Beast: “It was a large crowd, and the photos that I took and that are on the Getty website are testament to that.”