Estimates Suggest Thousands Showed Up For Trump's Phoenix Rally

After an extremely rocky few weeks at the White House, Donald Trump flew across the country Tuesday to find solace with some of his favorite people — his supporters. Thousands of people attended Trump's Phoenix rally, but thousands of others protested outside.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to tell exactly how many people attended the rally, but it was likely somewhere in the thousands. The Phoenix Convention Center where the event was held has a 19,000 person capacity, according to The Arizona Republic, and the room looked packed, from some perspectives. CNN also reported that some supporters had lined up at 8:00 a.m. local time to get the best spots at the rally.

While presidents very typically have public events around the country, Trump's rallies are unusual because they are official 2020 campaign events. Trump filed to start his 2020 campaign on Inauguration Day, and since February, he's already held several campaign events across the country. The locations of these events seem to be very specifically chosen as well — for the most part, they've been in swing states like Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

But it makes sense for Trump to keep focusing on campaigning because it seems to be very lucrative for him. According to Wired, Trump's reelection campaign has already netted him at least $600,000, primarily because of rental space at Trump Tower.

The even more problematic part? There's no way to tell if that amount isn't actually a lot higher because Trump still hasn't released his tax returns.

Of course, all of those rallies, and perhaps most so on Tuesday night, drew nearly as many Trump protesters as Trump supporters. BuzzFeed News producer Andrew Kimmel posted on Twitter that "this is the largest demonstration of counter protesters that [he's] seen at any of Trumps rallies since he became president," and estimated that there were 10,000 protesters present.

According to the Los Angeles Times, several thousand people gathered outside the Phoenix rally for protests, and many drove for hours to come voice their objections to the president. "This is a conservative state, but it's not a crazy state," protester Phyllis Brodsky told the Times. "I want to make sure it stays that way — not crazy."

Trump only won Arizona by 3.6 percentage points in the presidential election, and that lead could have easily disappeared in the rising tide of left-wing political activism in the interim. If the number of supporters doesn't rise drastically, Trump's chances at even winning the Republican nomination could be in trouble.