Fact Check: Did Trump Rally Replace Audience With “Actors”?

Donald Trump’s rallies have often attracted wild and loyal supporters, surrounding the former president, festooned in pro-Trump and “Make America Great Again” attire.
Having spoken at nearly 80 rallies and events since November 2022, Trump’s ardent and colorful fan base has given the Republican hopeful a distinct, uniform, and reliable base of public support throughout his campaign.
However, according to a viral post on social media this week, it was strongly suggested that the Trump campaign team had used “actors” to fill in parts of at least one rally audience.
The Claim
A post on X, formerly Twitter, on July 28, 2024, by criminal defense attorney and editor-in-chief of liberal news site MeidasTouch Network Ron Filipkowski, viewed 3.4 million times, suggested that “actors” had been used to replace unenthusiastic audience members at a Trump rally.
“Pathetic,” Filipkowski said.
“The campaign that fakes and stages everything had a couple people behind Trump who weren’t sychophanting enough, so they kicked them out and replaced them with actors.
“The whole campaign is a fraud.”
The post included a video showing a student known as “plaid shirt guy” who was pictured at a Trump rally being replaced by other audience members after being seen grimacing and pulling faces behind the former president.
The Facts
There are a few misleading elements to this claim.
To start, the footage is not from the 2024 presidential campaign, despite what the post on X may imply.
The clip is from a 2018 rally in Montana for the midterm elections. The “plaid shirt guy” in the background became the focus of media attention after a video of his gesturing and grimacing went viral.
The New York Times identified him then as 17-year-old high school senior Tyler Linfesty.
Linfesty, at the time a high school senior at Billings West High School in Billings, Montana, said while he had wanted to see the then-president give a speech, he could not bring himself to clap and cheer despite instructions.
“That was not me trying to protest,” he said.
“That was just my honest reactions to the things that he was saying.”
Linfesty, who was also seen putting on a badge for the Democratic Socialists of America, was told halfway through the speech that he was being replaced and later asked not to come back.
The suggestion the people in the background were “actors” may have been inspired by another post on X by user @DividedWeFa11, which used the same Trump rally video. That post, quoted at the bottom of Filipkowski’s, referred to Linfesty being replaced with “MAGA plants.”
Other responses to the video went further. User @jusancgal46 wrote “✔️💯Yes, this whole campaign, like the last one has been staged. They’ve run ads for “actors” & paid people to come to the rallies. They’ve brought in bus loads from wherever they could find them. I’m sorry that there are people who believe it’s real‼️🇺🇸💙”
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek that the suggestion that the audience members were actors was “fake news.”
There’s no evidence that the people who replaced Linfesty were actors or otherwise had been hired by the Trump campaign team. The Trump campaign has been subject to historical false claims that it had tried to hire “minority actors and actresses” to support him at rallies.
The likelihood that hired actors were present but they were on-call to replace disagreeable audience members seems vanishingly thin. While we are not certain what the arrangement was between the Trump campaign and the people in the background, there is no evidence to show they were actors and, in any case, the video has nothing to do with the current presidential campaign.
While the word “actor” may be figurative, referring to a person willing to show enthusiasm at request but not for reimbursement, the framing and context of the claim make it misleading.
Newsweek has contacted MeidasTouch, which Filipkowski edits, via email for comment.
The Ruling
Unverified.
The video in this post is from the 2018 midterm elections, not the 2024 presidential campaign. There is no evidence that the people in the video, who replaced unenthusiastic audience members, were actors. Trump’s campaign has denied the suggestion.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team