Vice President JD Vance was humiliated after he was greeted by thousands of empty seats at a Turning Point USA event where all the tickets were free.
The VP was the VIP guest at the This Is The Turning Point Tour on Tuesday at the Akins Ford Arena in Athens, Georgia.
The 180,000 sq. ft. venue has a capacity of more than 8,000 seats and Vance’s appearance had been heavily promoted by Turning Point, the conservative movement targeting students founded by slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The national campus tour is being advertised as “a chance to honor Charlie’s mission and keep the fight alive. We know he wouldn’t want us to surrender or be coerced into silence. Free speech is only free if we use our voices.”
Tickets were also free, with students and ‘general attendees’ required to register first online, then advised they would be allowed in on a first-come, first-served basis after doors opened at 1:30 p.m.
By the time Vance came on stage, however, the arena was virtually empty. Jake Traylor, an MS NOW journalist, estimated the venue was only a quarter-full when Vance was talking, which would mean roughly 2,000 people turned up.
Footage showed the entire second half of the venue was empty, on both the floor and in the stands, with the camera crew set up at the rear.
Meidas Touch shared the footage with the caption, “Tens of people went to see VP JD Vance at today’s Turning Point USA event.”
The Red & Black, an Athens-based student site that reported on the event, said that students and community members filled up “around a third” of the venue.
They said protesters outside the venue had signs that read “What would the real Jesus do?,” “God does not hate, Turning Point does” and “Jesus warned us about J.D. Vance.”
Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia, shared footage of the sparsely attended event just minutes before it was due to begin.
Boedy told the Daily Beast that he estimated there were around 1,200 people in the 8,000-capacity venue.
“The student section on floor was 1,000 chairs and they didn’t fill - maybe 900,” Boedy said. “And the others were definitely no more than 300.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Turning Point and reps for Vance for confirmation of crowd numbers.
Vance’s limited pulling power among the MAGA fanbase is in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s fascination with crowd sizes.
Trump has frequently boasted, without solid evidence, that he draws the largest crowds in U.S. political history, while talking down the popularity of his political rivals.
“Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump said in 2024. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people.”
The modest crowd wasn’t the only hiccup for Vance—he was repeatedly heckled during the event.
As Vance was speaking, someone in the audience shouted out, “Jesus Christ does not support genocide.”
The VP was quick to address “whoever yelled that out from the dark,” saying, “Yes, I agree, Jesus Christ certainly does not support genocide... I think that’s a pretty easy principle.”
The heckler later shouted, “You’re killing children, you’re bombing children!”
As soon as Vance fronted the meagre crowd on Tuesday, he explained that Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika, who had been due to attend, withdrew at the last minute after what he called “some threats.”
A source told CBS News Kirk was a no-show after security concerns including hostile or threatening messages she may have received, some via social media.
The U.S. Secret Service determined there was no credible or specific threat tied to the event, the venue, or the vice president, who took to the stage after being briefed by his security detail.
Journalist Eric Spracklen shared footage of the minimal attendance, and posted on X, “They really want us to believe that the TPUSA event was safe enough for the Vice President but not for Erika Kirk? I’m not buying it. She canceled because they couldn’t pull more than a couple hundred people. This is the most telling thing I’ve ever seen.”
But Kirk herself said on X that “after all our family has been through, I take my security team’s recommendations extremely seriously.”
That prompted a clapback from her MAGA nemesis, Candace Owens, who wrote, “Stop. This is exhausting. You pulled out because of bad ticket sales... The Secret Service sits above your security team. Were there actually a viable threat, the Vice President would not have continued the event.”
She added, “Your closest threat is the s--t Public Relations team you hired that continues to operate under the delusion that they are smarter than the public. They aren’t.”
The next stop on the This Is the Turning Point tour is April 21 at Ohio State University, featuring would-be Ohio governor Vivek Ramaswamy, MAGA-friendly reality TV star Savannah Chrisley, and Fox News host Lawrence Jones.
The following night will see Donald Trump Jr., border czar Tom Homan, and YouTuber Benny Johnson at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
