Attendees waited hours to leave Trump rally as fans lash out on social media
The rally, which was the former President’s first of the year, ended in slightly confusing circumstances
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Your support makes all the difference.Former President Donald Trump’s Arizona rally on Saturday left many of his supporters frustrated after some were left waiting around for hours before they could leave.
The vast majority of the attendees appeared to enjoy Mr Trump’s first rally of 2022, as was evidenced by the crowd’s enthusiastic responce to his speech. As ever, it featured his greatest hits of falsehoods and lies about the supposedly stolen 2020 Presidential election, allegations which have been repeatedly disproven.
And yet, for all that those statements went down well with his fans, what transpired after Mr Trump left the stage certainly did not. Soon after he finished his speech, a number of people took to social media to complain that they were not allowed to leave the site of the rally for several hours.
The Arizona Republic, which dispatched reporters to the venue, helped shed some light on the post-rally delays : “Though people attending the event left happy, when they got to their cars their mood may have turned sour. Many people leaving the venue had to wait more than an hour before they could exit the dirt parking lots and get on the road.”
TikToker @special_head spoke to people waiting to leave the Arizona rally. Some reportedly waited as many as three hours. One woman claimed that they couldn’t leave until Trump did because the Secret Service needed to keep the road secure.
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The Independent has reached out to Mr Trump’s spokesperson for comment. It’s not unusual for crowds to face delays when leaving events with a Secret Service presence.
A man wearing a “Gods Guns & Trump” shirt angrily told the TikToker: “The Secret Service can go **** themselves.”
“This is bull****. I’ve never had my freedom restricted like this in my life,” a woman in a red vest with a USA pin on the lapel told the TikToker. “And of all places for it happen. My first Trump rally.”
“I’m an attorney. This is false imprisonment,” she added. “…They’re treating us like commoners. Let all the VIPs go first and who cares about the little people.”
A caption on the TikTok claims that the parking lot had no bathrooms.
Another of special_head’s TikToks from the rally includes the unverified claim that some women peed themselves during the wait. The TikTok has amassed almost 1.5 million views at the time of writing.
“HELD HOSTAGE AT TRUMP RALLY,” a Twitter user wrote of the delay. “What a way to treat your supporters.”
According to DailyDot, some estimate the length of the car line to be between five and 25 miles – something which Mr Trump reportedly alluded to in his speech.
The 75-year-old is planning a similar sized rally in Texas next month. Both he and disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly appeared in the state back in December for Mr Trump’s ‘History Tour’ – which made headlines due to apparently poor ticket sales.
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