No, Kamala Harris did not inflate crowd sizes by busing hundreds of attendees to a NH rally

As the 2024 presidential election nears, some conservative commentators have wrongly asserted that they know why so many people are at Vice President Kamala Harris’ rallies.

"It’s Gotten So BAD, Even Liberal CBS Just Exposed How Fake Kamala’s Campaign Is," the title of an Oct. 12 Facebook video by conservative commentator Dan Bongino reads.

In the video, Bongino, whom PolitFact has previously fact-checked, says, "How bad does it have to be for CBS to expose the fact that Kamala Harris, who’s drawing … the biggest crowds you’ve ever seen, millions, billions … Here’s CBS like, ah, actually I think they’re busing them in."

The clip then cuts to a CBS reporter at a Sept. 4 rally for Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, in North Hampton, New Hampshire. The reporter says, "Behind me, hundreds of invited Harris supporters are leaving and boarding shuttle buses."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The claim also went viral on X. Users there shared a video of 12 buses from Yankee Line, a charter bus company, leaving Harris’ Sept. 4 event and said it was proof that Harris was busing people to the rally from Massachusetts.

The evidence that Bongino provided for his claim that the Harris’ campaign was busing people to the rally was the CBS reporter saying attendees were leaving the rally on shuttles.

But the buses were used only to transport people to the rally from a parking lot a few miles away. A Yankee Line spokesperson told PolitiFact in an email that the company provided shuttle service buses from "an offsite parking lot 3 miles away" because of parking restrictions at the venue.

The rally took place at Throwback Brewery in North Hampton, New Hampshire. We geolocated the business and confirmed that its parking lot would be too small to accommodate the thousands of people who were reported to have attended the event.

Featured Fact-check

Instagram posts

stated on November 13, 2024 in an Instagram post

“Breaking: Trump names Boebert secretary of education”

We contacted Bongino for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact has previously rated multiple claims False that the Harris’ campaign is paying attendees at its events. A Harris-Walz spokesperson told PolitiFact in August that their "campaign does not pay people to attend rallies."

The claim was shared amid news that attendees at former President Donald Trump’s rally in California’s Coachella Valley were stranded for hours Oct. 12 after shuttles that had brought them to the venue from parking lots were delayed in taking them back to their vehicles.

Although the Harris-Walz campaign provided buses to shuttle people from a nearby parking lot to the rally, the campaign did not bus people from out of state to the venue to increase attendance at the event, as Bongino and social media users claimed.

We rate Bongino’s claim that CBS exposed "the fact" that Kamala Harris’ crowd sizes are inflated because her campaign bused hundreds of attendees to her New Hampshire rally Mostly False.