'Chaos': Trump rally in Calif. desert ends in transportation disaster

Former President Donald Trump gestures while walking onstage for a campaign rally on Oct. 12, 2024, in Coachella, Calif. An issue with shuttle buses left a large crowd of the rally’s attendees stranded in the desert in what officials say was “dangerous” heat.

A large crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump were left stranded in the California desert in triple-digit temperatures on Saturday evening after not enough buses turned up to transport them from a controversial rally back to a parking lot.

Thousands of people arrived to hear the Republican nominee for president speak at Calhoun Ranch in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs, where temperatures reached more than 100 degrees Saturday afternoon. According to media reports, rally attendees who parked their cars in a lot used for the event were loaded onto buses and driven 5 miles to the ranch.

But when the event was over, attendees waited hours for buses to take them back.

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“There used to be like 20 buses when we were being brought here, but now there’s only like three buses operating,” said one rallygoer, Wesley Johnson, in a clip posted on X. (Johnson later deleted the clip, but other X accounts reshared it.) “It’s just chaos. Absolute chaos. All of us are stranded here. Everyone is stranded here.”

The clips Johnson posted on X, some of which were posted hours after the rally ended, show hundreds of people waiting around as night fell, with many expressing concern and confusion. In one clip, Johnson says the parking lot is a two-hour walk from the venue.

“Everyone is starting to freak out,” he says. “There’s people that go down this street, for I don’t know how long. They’ve been running us around, through all the different streets, telling us to go east and then going west and then going east again and then going west. It’s an absolute madhouse.”

Exactly what happened with the extra buses is unclear. In one post on X, Johnson said some were delayed because they needed to refuel, and he said some buses even became stranded themselves while trying to find fuel. Others incorrectly speculated that local Democratic officials, many of whom opposed the event from the start, had a hand in delaying the shuttles.

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The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office told SFGATE in a statement that deputies used their cruisers to escort some rallygoers back to the parking lot but deferred questions about event logistics to the Trump campaign.

“The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office assisted some attendees in returning to their vehicles, including using their own vehicles to provide rides,” the statement said. “However, regarding the event logistics, which includes the shuttle buses, we will defer those questions to the campaign team as our department was not in charge of that aspect of the event.”

Representatives of Trump did not immediately reply to a request for comment sent by SFGATE.

Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in San Diego, told SFGATE that temperatures in the area bordered on “dangerous,” especially for sensitive groups.

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By the time doors opened at 1 p.m., the temperature was 99 degrees, the weather service said. It peaked at 102 degrees at 3 p.m. and then crept back down to 99 degrees by the time the rally began at 5 p.m. When the rally ended around 7 p.m., the temperature was 93 degrees. At 10 p.m., when Johnson was posting clips on social media, the temperature was 86 degrees.

“That’s not bad when you have access to air conditioning and are able to stay hydrated,” Wheeler said. “But, considering the circumstances, I would say that borders on dangerous.”

The New York Times reported that several attendees required medical attention during the rally due to heat-related illnesses.

Johnson said he eventually pulled the clips and posts detailing the chaos from his X profile because they caused too much “drama.” But he stood by his account of what happened in a subsequent post.

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“I deleted the posts because I was hoping some help would come from it, but all it did was cause drama,” he wrote, adding: “My story stands, but the drama got out of hand.”

Trump himself hasn’t weighed in on the controversy. Rather, in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, he heralded the rally as a success.

“100,000 plus in Coachella,” he wrote. “What a night. Thank you!”

The Desert Sun reported that, despite Trump’s claim that more than 100,000 people attended the rally, a permit for the event issued by the county capped the venue’s capacity at 15,000.

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The rally also generated headlines for what law enforcement officials have described as a possible third assassination attempt against the former president in just as many months.

According to Forbes, a Las Vegas man was stopped at a security checkpoint outside the rally after presenting a fake VIP pass. The man, Vem Miller, was subsequently arrested on firearm charges after officers allegedly found an unregistered shotgun and handgun — which were loaded — as well as multiple passports and ID cards with different names in his vehicle, which had a fake license plate.

In an interview with the Southern California News Group, Miller denied that he was trying to kill Trump, whom he supports. He also said he had purchased the firearms years earlier for protection.

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“These accusations are complete bulls—t,” Miller told reporters. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

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