Your support helps us to tell the story
Donald Trump supporters were left “stranded” for hours in sweltering conditions at the Coachella Valley rally impacted by a suspected assassination attempt on the former president.
The Republican presidential nominee spoke in California on Saturday at an event plagued with issues from the offset.
Along with Trump facing an altercation with a heckler, an armed Las Vegas man who held ID documents under multiple names was arrested outside the rally. Authorities claim Trump may have been the target of a third assassination attempt in as many months.
While thousands of supporters were bussed into Calhoun Ranch, which was situated about five miles away from where they parked their vehicles, people attending claimed the event organizers had neglected transport for the return journey.
And instead of being shuttled away from the venue after Trump exited the stage at about 7pm PT following a near-90-minute address, many attendees were left stranded in 93F heat, according to video footage on social media.
“Apparently the buses are no longer coming,” said one attendee in the clip taken more than three hours after the rally had concluded.
“There used to be like 20 buses when we were being brought here, but now there’s only like three buses operating.”
He added: “It’s just chaos, absolute chaos. All of us are stranded here, everyone is stranded here.”
Another clip posted to X, which had since been deleted, saw a rally-goer reportedly claim that there was “only one bus in rotation” which took half an hour for each drop off.
In the footage, flashing lights from police cars illuminate the disgruntled faces of Trump supporters seemingly left behind, with one heard condemning the organizer’s “failures” that had led to the delay in being returned to the parking lot.
Sharing the video footage on X, The Tennessee Holler claimed that many of those left waiting for transport to the car park were elderly.
Trump has yet to publicly speak of the bussing debacle, but claimed on Truth Social that 100,000 people turned out for the rally in the typically blue stronghold – a state which Vice President Kamala Harris currently leads by almost 27 percent, according to polling by The Hill.
However, a permit issued for the event by Riverside County was said to have capped the capacity to 15,000, according to local news outlet Desert Sun.
The former president’s campaign has faced a slew of backlash online for the purported organizational errors.
“@realDonaldTrump can’t run a rally, and you think he can run the country?,” wrote The Mic Podcast host Ryan Shead. “He doesn’t care about his supporters. You think he cares about you?”
While the Republicans Against Trump account added: “Thousands of people were stranded after the Trump rally in Coachella on Saturday night. The Trump campaign provided buses to bring people to the rally but no busses showed up to take them back to their cars.
“Trump doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
The Independent has contacted the Trump campaign for more information.
