Donald
Trump
Trump says supporters who harassed Biden campaign
bus 'did nothing wrong'
FBI investigating incident that prompted safety
concerns
Convoys also blocked traffic in New York and New
Jersey
Joan E
Greve in Washington and agencies
@joanegreve
Mon 2 Nov
2020 16.53 GMTLast modified on Mon 2 Nov 2020 17.43 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/02/trump-biden-supporters-campaign-bus
Trump at a rally in Miami on Sunday night. ‘This story
is FALSE,’ the president tweeted on Monday. ‘They did nothing wrong.’
“This story
is FALSE,” the president tweeted on Monday, the last day before election day.
“They did nothing wrong.”
The FBI confirmed it was investigating the incident,
after videos shared on social media sparked widespread safety concerns.
Concerns were also raised after convoys of Trump supporters blocked traffic on
highways in New York and New Jersey on Sunday.
In Texas,
police investigated a car crash at the scene and witnesses reported that some
members of the pro-Trump caravan were armed. Nobody was hurt and neither Biden
nor his running mate, Kamala Harris, was on the bus at the time.
But the
incident prompted the Biden campaign to cancel at least two events in a state
where polling remains tight, as Democrats accused the president of encouraging
supporters to engage in acts of intimidation.
The
historian Eric Cervini, who had flown to Texas to help with get-out-the-vote
efforts, posted a video on Instagram that showed a long line of cars with Trump
paraphernalia stalled along the highway, waiting for the Biden-Harris bus.
“These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed,
surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road,”
he wrote, adding: “As a historian who studied the rise of the Third Reich, I
can tell you: this is how a democracy dies.”
A local
progressive activist who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity said
the incident was a reflection of larger problems in the area.
“It’s straight-up harassment and intimidation,” she
said. “And then, to see President Trump validate them by retweeting their video
and saying he loves Texas, he’s basically endorsing domestic terrorism.”
Regarding
the incident in Texas, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National
Committee, said on Sunday: “Certainly you don’t want harm. And we shouldn’t be
hurting other people. The president would not endorse that.”
At a
late-night rally in Opa-locka, Florida, before Trump took the stage, the US
senator Marco Rubio said: “I saw yesterday a video of these people in Texas.
Did you see it? All the cars on the road ... we love what they did.
“But here’s
the thing they don’t know: we do that in Florida every day.”
Trump
appeared to seek to discourage the FBI from investigating, saying in a tweet:
“In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong.”
On Monday,
Trump added: “This story is FALSE. They did nothing wrong. But the ANTIFA
Anarchists, Rioters and Looters, who have caused so much harm and destruction
in Democrat run cities, are being seriously looked at!”
Unlike
Texas, New York and New Jersey are strongly Democratic states, all but certain
to go to Biden on election night. But on Sunday video footage on social media
showed vehicles flying pro-Trump flags blocking traffic on the Whitestone
Bridge over the East River in the Bronx, in New York City.
Local media
reported similar blockades on the express lanes of the Garden State Parkway in
New Jersey and the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River, linking Westchester
and Rockland counties in upstate New York.
The
Democratic state senator David Carlucci, who represents Rockland county, called
the blockades “aggressive, dangerous and reckless” and added: “We all have the
right to show support for a presidential candidate, but we do not have the
right to endanger others and to break the law.”
Speaking in
Philadelphia on Sunday, Joe Biden said: “We’ve never had anything like this. At
least we’ve never had a president who thinks it’s a good thing.”
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