NOT AGAIN! Trump Rally In PA Ends in Chaos With Attendees Left In Cold For Almost 2 Hours Waiting For Buses

By Sarah RumpfOct 31st, 2020, 11:25 pm
 

President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, PA had a chilling ending — literally — with thousands of the president’s supporters left stranded in the dark and cold, waiting for almost two hours for buses to take them back to their cars. And it wasn’t the first time this had happened.

A similar scene had unfolded Tuesday night at a Trump rally in Omaha, Nebraska, when Trump finished his speech and his supporters were left behind. The shuttles that had brought them from distant parking lots were no longer running, and the campaign had failed to arrange for adequate number of buses. Spending hours in frigid temperatures sent several people to the hospital and others received medical treatment at the scene.

Saturday’s Trump rallies in Pennsylvania were not quite as cold as that night in Nebraska, but reporters on the ground still found people unhappy after again spending hours in low temperatures and no organized transportation back to their cars. Trump had left on Marine One and once again the buses that brought people to the rally were nowhere in sight.

CNN political reporters DJ Judd and Ryan Nobles tweeted several photos from the post-rally scene in Butler, Judd noted that “thousands of supporters who have been let loose into the night with no sign of the shuttles they’ve been told will take them back to parking.” According to Judd and Nobles, the temperature was 41 degrees at that time.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper covered the story on AC360 Saturday evening, chatting with Nobles, who described the scene as a “logistical nightmare,” with “thousands of people shoulder to shoulder, nowhere to go, no buses in sight, no direction from anyone from the Trump campaign to tell them where to go or how to get back to their parking spots.”

“It became so frustrating for many of these Trump supporters, they ended up just walking,” Nobles told Cooper. “That is the decision that our crew made, my producer and I walked about a mile to get to our parking lot.” According to Nobles, they passed many rally attendees who were walking at least three or four miles back to their cars.

Nobles said after he and Judd had tweeted their photos, the Trump campaign responded that they were sending buses, but it still took “more than an hour and a half.”

The temperature was above freezing, Nobles acknowledged, but many of the supporters “were already sitting outside in the cold for four, five hours waiting to hear the president speak and then had to wait for an hour or longer” before the buses picked them up.

The lack of social distancing that is common at Trump rallies continued afterwards as well. Nobles described the scene with the people “packed tightly” and then crowded onto the buses.

“It was a huge headache for the thousands of people that came to this rally tonight,” Nobles concluded.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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