Some who attended former President Donald Trump’s rally outside Coachella on Saturday, Oct. 12, needed rides from sheriff’s deputies to get back to their cars amid reports of rallygoers being stranded in the dark miles from their vehicles after shuttle buses stopped running.
There also were reports of Trump supporters being overcome in the 90- to 100-degree desert heat as they waited for the 2024 Republican presidential nominee to speak.
Also, Trump suggested a heckler would get “the hell knocked out of her” during a speech that demonized migrants and threatened to withhold wildfire money from California if Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t abide by Trump’s wishes on water policy.
Buses ferried thousands of rallygoers from three off-site parking lots to the early evening rally at Calhoun Ranch just outside Coachella’s city limits. Trump, the Republican 2024 presidential nominee, started speaking shortly after 5:30 p.m. and wrapped up his remarks shortly before 7 p.m.
People on X, formerly known as Twitter, reported being unable to catch a bus from the ranch back to where they parked. The three lots — one at the Riverside County Fairgrounds in Indio, another near the Spotlight 29 casino and a third near a gas station — were roughly 5 miles away from the venue.
“Apparently the buses are no longer coming,” a man said in a video posted on X by @58bugeye, which showed a line of people in the dark amid the flashing lights of Riverside County Sheriff’s Department vehicles.
Coachella mess
— BlueDream (@58bugeye) October 13, 2024
The venue where Trump held the rally is in the middle of nowhere and 5 miles from parking.
The cult was lured in with bus rides to get in to the venue and then abandoned when it was over.
This is the perfect metaphor for a Trump presidency.
Who has a slogan? pic.twitter.com/QkLKPlTrJv
“There used to be, like, 20 buses when we were being brought here, but now there’s only, like, three buses operating,” the man added. “It’s just chaos, absolute chaos. All of us are stranded here, everyone is stranded here.”
Since-deleted tweets from X account @WesleyxJohnson quoted bus drivers as saying buses had to drive half an hour to get refueled after all the local fuel sources were “completely depleted.”
“All buses have just called off!” another tweet from the account read. “Bus driver just got notified by (the California Highway Patrol) to stop picking up attendees! THIS MUST BE INVESTIGATED!!! PEOPLE ARE FREAKING STRANDED!!!”
Those stranded “were forced to either wait for alternative transportation or walk back on their own,” the Times of San Diego reported.
In an email, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said it “assisted some attendees in returning to their vehicles, including using their own vehicles to provide rides.”
Officer David Torres, a California Highway Patrol spokesperson, said via email that “there were no incidents in this area that CHP handled.”
“There became an issue with the drivers being over hours due to the traffic delays that prevented them from driving, leaving (the sheriff’s department) to transport the visitors themselves,” Torres said, noting that the California Department of Transportation limits the number of hours bus drivers can be on the road.
The highway patrol did not make contact with any drivers, Torres added.
“The Riverside County Sheriff Department advised CHP the bus drivers were over hours and asked if CHP could approve for them to work over their hours to transport individuals back to the pick-up point,” he said.
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The CHP told sheriff’s authorities it couldn’t approve bus drivers “to violate any federal or state laws, pertaining to driving hours,” Torres wrote.
County officials referred questions about the buses to the Trump campaign, which did not immediately respond Monday, Oct. 14, to a request for comment.
It’s not the first time rallygoers reported being stranded after Trump spoke.
In October 2020, there were reports of hundreds of people at a Trump event in Omaha, Nebraska, being stranded in the cold after buses didn’t pick them up.
On Saturday, thousands of people, many wearing pro-Trump T-shirts and red Make America Great Again hats synonymous with the former president’s supporters, flocked to the Coachella Valley for the rare California campaign rally by Trump in a state he’s all but certain to lose in the Nov. 5 general election.
Published reports indicated the fire marshal approved a permit for 15,000 people to attend the rally. It’s unknown how many actually attended, though people arrived at the fairgrounds as early at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.
By 12:30 p.m., it took an hour to get into the fairgrounds that host the annual Riverside County Fair & National Date Festival. From there, rallygoers had to wait an hour or longer in a serpentine line that stretched throughout the 100-acre or so fairground complex.
As temperatures reached 100 degrees, attendees asked T-shirt-selling vendors if they sold water or Gatorade. Vendors said no or told guests they had run out of water.
It’s not clear how many people were treated for heat-related illnesses or other medical emergencies at the rally. Ambulances frequently entered and exited the fairgrounds, and a video posted to X, apparently at the rally site, showed people sitting or lying on the ground directly in the sun while others shouted “Medic!” — apparently to help someone who passed out.
During the rally, which featured speeches by actor Dennis Quaid and others, Trump stopped his speech to address a heckler.
A protester was ejected from the rally. As the crowd jeered her, Trump said “Back home to Mommy. She goes back home to Mommy.”
Trump continued, imitating the imagined mother: “’Was that you, darling?’ And she gets the hell knocked out of her.”
“Her mother’s a big fan of ours,” the former president finished before returning to his speech. “Her mother, her father.”
It was unclear what the protester was doing during the event, or what happened to her afterward.
Trump has a long history of using violent language about hecklers at his rallies. During his 2016 campaign, he urged his crowds to “knock the crap” out of protesters and said of one, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
