Today on the House floor, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) suggested that nearly 1 million people attended the Tea Partiers’ 9/12 march on Washington, D.C.
The precise number of attendees has been a subject of some debate since the rally took place. FreedomWorks, which organized the event, initially reported that 1.5 million people had gathered in D.C. They later admitted that this number was a mistake, and more likely attendance had been between 600,000 – 800,000.
A day later, Glenn Beck insisted that a whopping 1.7 million people had attended, more than twice the FreedomWorks figure. But even the more modest number was about ten times the estimates of media outlets, which generally ranged in the tens of thousands.
But what does Mike Pence think?!?
Since there was never an official estimate made by local authorities, Pence was free in his floor speech today to put the rally’s attendance at a cool million. He said: “To suggest the men and women that are taking a stand for fiscal discipline and traditional values in the national debate today only speak for quote ‘grassroots activists’ is absurd. As evidenced by the hundreds of thousands who filled town hall meetings this summer, and the nearly millions of Americans that gathered here in Washington in September, millions of Americans, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, are worried about liberal social policies and runaway federal spending, deficit and debt.”
Watch the full clip here:
