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Empty seats? Trump’s Obsession with Crowd Size [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-13
Trump’s Obsession with Crowd Size:
Race, Money, and the Spectacle of Power
A Craigslist ad offering $1,000 in cryptocurrency and fast food for “seat fillers” at a June 14 event in Washington, D.C., the same day as Donald Trump’s 79th birthday parade, has gone viral. It asked participants to wear red, white, and blue and mentioned “perception control.” The ad is real, but it’s unclear if it was serious or a prank. Even if it is a bogus seat-filler, chatter underscores broader concerns, an optical obsession.
A televised military parade on June 14 will draw comparisons to authoritarian pageantry. A visibly diverse and enthusiastic crowd blunts that critique while providing campaign footage for future ads. Thus, even a private donor or a friendly super PAC could see value in funding seat optimization.
Trump has long been fixated on crowd size. The hiring extras—real or rumored—fit that pattern. Paying extras would guarantee a packed parade route and forestall another round of “empty-seat” headlines. The ad’s phrase “maximum perception control” echoes this goal. Fabricated or not, similar Craigslist ads promising cash to boost Trump crowds have surfaced since 2016; several were later debunked, yet others proved to be genuine guerrilla marketing by PACs. That history makes a real offer at least plausible, even if unflattering.
What the ad said
Dress code: red, white, and blue clothing. A MAGA-style red hat will be supplied on-site.
Pay: $ 1,000 in $TRUMP memecoin, plus a fast-food lunch.
“Perception control”: organizers wanted “people of color and ethnic groups” placed front and center on camera.
The listing singled out “people of color and ethnic groups … to be prominently displayed.” That aligns with past Trump-world efforts to showcase non-white supporters in rally camera pans, countering criticism that his base skews overwhelmingly white. If genuine, it is stagecraft, not inclusivity. Either way, it weaponises race by treating non-white bodies as props.
The ad said the payment was from a company called FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT LLC, which owns lots of $TRUMP cryptocurrency, launched during the 2024 election, according to the report by Newsweek.
Using $TRUMP cryptocurrency for payment:
keeps cash off the books
drives demand for the coin (raising its price)
rewards loyalists while flattering Trump’s image as a “crypto-friendly” icon.
The ad also stated that the event was being managed by a company named T-Mellon Events, but that name doesn’t appear anywhere online, and there is no evidence of their work. The image in the ad was actually from a Russian military event, not from America, making many think the ad might be fake or a prank to make Trump look bad.
A hoax would be the simplest explanation for the Craigslist “seat-filler” posting. However, if the ad were genuine, its logic would still be clear: it would serve a long-standing Trump strategy of choreographing optics, monetising loyalty, and diversifying the camera frame to blunt accusations of racism.
Whether prank or real recruitment, the Craigslist ad underlines Trump’s enduring obsession with crowd optics and shows how quickly a single screenshot can ricochet through the media ecosystem, especially when it touches on race, money, and the spectacle of power keeping. Keeping an eye on June 14 will reveal if the empty seats get filled—and by whom.
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