Social media posts said 55,000 cars took part in a pro-Trump convoy in the Miami area on Oct. 18, citing figures that they said came from the Miami Dade Police Department (MDPD). The MDPD told Reuters it had made no such estimate.
The posts in English ( here ) and Spanish ( here ), read: “Ladies and gentlemen, A VERY GOOD MORNING !!!!! We woke up with excellent news !!! The report from the #MiamiDade police dept. declared that our #TrumpVictoryCaravan #motherofallcaravans PART II, #Cubans4Trump HAD 55,000 CARS, AND NO LESS THAN 275,000 PATRIOTS, SINCE EACH CAR WAS AN AVERAGE OF 3-5 PEOPLE”.
MDPD public information officer Angel Rodriguez told Reuters: “Those numbers didn’t come out from this office. We did not put out the numbers … I don’t know who cited it was an MDPD spokesperson, because it was nobody from this office.”
Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump did gather the weekend after his went to Miami for a televised townhall question-and-answer session with voters on Oct. 15 (see local reports here and here ).
ABC affiliate Local 10, which broadcasts for the Miami area, estimated that between 500 and 1,000 vehicles joined a caravan. In an update to its article ( here ) it noted that blogs had quoted the MDPD saying 30,000 cars took part. But a spokesperson for the MDPD “told Local 10 that they could not provide how many vehicles participated since they do not give estimates”.
VERDICT
False. While there was a caravan of Trump supporters in Miami on Oct. 18, the Miami Dade Police Department did not report that 55,000 vehicles had gathered there.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work reuters.com/fact-check/about/