Seth Meyers mocks Trumps dwindling crowd sizes

October 9, 2026

A man sits behind a talk show desk, gesturing. In the top left is an image of an arena with some empty seat towards the top.

Trump wants to make it clear to you that he's still filling stadiums when he does his rallies — but Seth Meyers thinks the evidence suggests otherwise.

In the Late Night clip above, Meyers plays footage of Trump speaking to a stadium with empty seats dotted throughout the upper rows, telling the crowd "there's never been anything like it."

"I'm sorry, there's never been anything like totally average?" asks Meyers. "We can see the empty seats and it's fine, it's still a decent crowd, but don't oversell it. You can't say there's 'never been anything like it', because there has. It's in fact the most like an arena audience that I've ever seen."

And as for Trump's explanation that the upper rows are half empty because people "migrate downward"?

"Sure, but the upper deck only comes down when there are empty seats closer to the stage," says Meyers. "You can't move down if the arena is full. You would never say to a friend in the upper deck, 'Hey, check it out. Should we go down there and sit in their laps?'"

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