It was the morning after Donald Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017, and acting National Park Service director Mike Reynolds was just trying to get breakfast ready when he got an unexpected call. It was from President Trump himself.
The new president wasn’t thrilled with the photos that had been published, suggesting that his inauguration crowd was smaller than the one that had attended Barack Obama’s in 2009. Trump, feeling the sting of comparison, ordered Reynolds and the Park Service to send over new images to “correct” the record. The National Park Service (NPS), which oversees the National Mall, quickly complied and forwarded the photos to the White House.
Fast forward to the week before Trump’s second inauguration, and you can bet that crowd size will once again be a hot topic. Trump has always been very focused on these numbers, so it’s no surprise that the media and crowd experts are gearing up for another round of debates on how many people will fill the National Mall.
One source inside the Park Service expressed concern that they could end up in the middle of another crowd-size controversy. If the photos of the crowd on January 20th don’t look flattering to Trump, things could get messy again.
Rachel Reisner, communications director for the Trump inaugural committee, didn’t give specifics on how many people they expected for the upcoming inauguration. However, she did hint that the event would be memorable, drawing a diverse crowd of supporters, industry leaders, and diplomats.
For some context, the NPS stopped giving crowd estimates in 1996 after a legal battle over its estimates for the Million Man March. Still, they’ll be snapping photos of the event this time around, but not for crowd size purposes. Media outlets like Reuters will also have access to aerial photos from the top of the Washington Monument, which will give a bird’s-eye view of the entire crowd.
A Reuters image from the first Trump inauguration showed fewer people in attendance than Obama’s 2009 swearing-in ceremony. Experts estimate that Obama’s crowd was somewhere between 800,000 to 1 million, while Trump’s first inauguration drew only about a third of that number.
Fast forward to 2024, and crowd size is still a key focus for Trump. He’s been claiming throughout his campaign that his crowds were bigger than those of his Democratic opponents, including Vice President Kamala Harris.
Interestingly, people who attend these events often travel from all over the country, hopping on buses organized by political groups supporting the incoming president.
A Closer Look at the Numbers
G. Keith Still, a crowd scientist from the University of Suffolk, has been at the forefront of analyzing these crowd numbers. He did so in 2017, and he’ll be doing it again next week. Still uses aerial photos and tools like Google Earth to calculate the crowd size by measuring the area people occupy. From there, he calculates how many people fit into a given space.
He also considers factors like Metro ridership, how quickly people fill the Mall, and parking lot occupancy. “The numbers don’t lie,” Still says.
This obsession with crowd size started early in Trump’s presidency. In fact, it took over the first few days of his term. Trump’s press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, made a bold claim during a press conference, saying Trump’s inauguration had the “largest audience ever” — both in person and globally. This statement, which Spicer later admitted was inaccurate, was based on figures that had him saying 720,000 people were on the National Mall.
As for the permit for the second inauguration, the NPS gave the Trump inaugural committee a placeholder estimate of 500,000 people. A similar placeholder was given for his 2017 inauguration, though the final estimate ranged between 750,000 and 1 million.
So, as the big day approaches, it seems the debate over crowd size is far from over. Whether it’s media photos, estimates from crowd scientists, or official permits, everyone seems to have their own version of the numbers. But one thing is for sure: Trump’s second inauguration will once again put the National Mall front and center in the spotlight!
