The crowd size at Trump's Coliseum rally

Daily Point

Venue was filled to capacity but crowd was smaller than the ticket ask    

More than 14,000 people were inside Nassau Coliseum for former President Donald Trump’s rally last week — with another "couple thousand" outside the arena, sources told The Point.

That’s a far cry from the more than 60,000 people who requested tickets in advance of the rally. But it was enough of a crowd to fill the Coliseum to capacity for the evening, sources said.

The arena, however, was not set up in typical concert fashion, and therefore accommodated less than the Coliseum’s maximum capacity of 16,000 visitors that some concerts there attract. Trump’s crowd also was smaller than what the Coliseum was able to accommodate before its 2015 renovation, when it could hold 16,170 for New York Islanders hockey games and more than 18,000 for concerts.

Sources noted that measuring the Trump crowd is a bit tricky, since no tickets were provided and seating was not assigned. That meant that people weren’t admitted all at once, as the Coliseum personnel had to make sure rallygoers all had seats. It also meant that people could move around within the Coliseum once inside.

That may explain why some photos from earlier in the evening seemed to show the arena with plenty of empty seats. But by the time Trump spoke, it was a full house.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

A slice of uncertainty

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Quick Points

School biz

• Manufacturers are now making a line of school products that include bulletproof backpacks, bulletproof three-ring binders, bulletproof hoodies, bulletproof dry-erase boards, bulletproof classroom desks, bulletproof pencil pouches, and bulletproof collapsible safe rooms. Not for sale: student and teacher dreams that are bulletproof.
• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a Nassau Coliseum crowd largely from the Indian diaspora, "We belong to a country where there are hundreds of languages, hundreds of dialects. We have all the faiths and religions of the world, and yet we are moving forward united." That will come as news to his nation’s Muslims and Sikhs.
• This summer, former President Donald Trump held one-third as many rallies as he did in 2016. There are many ways of measuring how a person slows down.
• Former President Donald Trump made a new pitch for women voters, telling a weekend rally in North Carolina, "Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion because it is now where it always had to be, with the states, and with the vote of the people." Doesn’t exactly sound like a winning message for women.
• Republican Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida, talking about the Secret Service, said, "And for God’s sake, if we need to buy the Secret Service some drones, I’ll hold up my credit card and buy drones, technology, whatever they need to get us through this election and over the next few months." Hard to argue that wouldn’t help.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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