Donald Trump is a man of strange decisions, and he reinforced his position at the head of America’s weirdest political movement in mid-October when he decided to hold a campaign event at one of the biggest musical festivals of the year.
Concerts are rarely the chosen venue for political campaigns, but Trump decided to ditch the traditional for something unexpected. Campaigning in California was already a bold move — he’s all but guaranteed to lose the historically blue state in November — and doing so amid a chaotic festival was truly asinine. Conversations about what strange motivations prompted the unexpected decision didn’t last long, however, due to the far more pressing issues that quickly overtook all other chatter.
Thousands of MAGA-minded voters made their way into the California desert to attend Trump’s strangely situated rally, but hundreds found themselves stranded and confused after the busses that transported them to the event failed to pick them up. This left them with few options, and Trump wasn’t making moves to better their situation.
Temperatures at the outdoor venue reached 100 degrees and more over the weekend, leaving attendees stranded and sweltering as they awaited transportation from the location. For many, their vehicles were miles away and would have required a several-hour walk through extreme heat, with no water available.
The breakdown in transportation reportedly came about due to a snag in logistical planning. It’s not uncommon for the Trump camp to bungle various details of this kind, but the dangerous position this particular misstep left people in prompted heightened scrutiny of the presidential campaign. Trump has left his supporters high and dry before, but this time he put them in genuine danger.
Several factors have taken the blame in the wake of the incident, including accessibility to fuel and bad planning on the Trump team’s part. Part of what allegedly caused so many stranded supporters hinges upon nearby fuel resources, which reportedly ran low enough to cause major issues — and even more major delays — for the several dozen busses tapped to transport attendees.
Following the rally, some people posed their own theories about the breakdown in transportation. Leaning on a common Trump trend from across his career as a businessman, quite a few people assumed he simply failed to pay the bus company. He’s well-known for refusing to pay contractors and even his own employees, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to pin the blame for the bus issue on Trump’s parsimonious tendencies. There are no confirmed reports to back these claims, however, and until they are, we’ll assume it really was a logistical issue, not a monetary one.
Still, it’s part of Trump’s job, alongside his team, to ensure logistics are sorted out ahead of a planned event. It’s vital that the team hosting the rally fully considers every step of its rollout, particularly when health is a concern, as it was at the October event. Incompetence in such important matters affects far more than the candidate himself, and could even put lives at risk.