Trump leaves rallygoers in Michigan waiting in the cold for hours to record a podcast

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Donald Trump showed up several hours late to a rally in Michigan on Friday, causing thousands of his supporters to leave the city while others hunkered down in the cold weather waiting for the former president at an outdoor rally on the battlefield.

The Republican presidential candidate was delayed for an interview with Joe Rogan, the most listened to podcaster in the country, that lasted three hours in Austin, Texas. Trump is aggressively courting younger male voters, among whom Rogan is very popular. The interview was published on Friday evening.

Democrat Kamala Harris was also in Texas on Friday to appear with superstar Beyoncé in Houston at an event celebrating the conservative state’s abortion ban after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The three justices who voted to overturn Roe were nominated by Trump.

Minutes before Trump’s rally in Michigan was scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. EST, his spokesman posted on social media platform X that Trump was currently leaving Texas, more than two hours away by plane. Trump recorded a video from his plane in which he urged his supporters to stay, noting that it was Friday night and promising, “We’re going to have a good time tonight.”

Trump was scheduled to speak at the Traverse City airport, where temperatures dropped to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (over 10 degrees Celsius) after dark.

Participants who had not left packed, some covered with blankets, waited for him to land. The crowd sounded and looked disengaged as North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon tried to pass the time on stage. Hats were thrown towards the participants.

Some of those who remained here took it in stride.

“Well, I guess we arrived on time,” said Karen Targanski of Bay City, Michigan, more than two hours away by car. She added that it was “worth the wait” nonetheless.

Trump Fuels Immigration in Texas Speech

With 11 days until the election, Trump and Harris toured battleground states and made short trips to solidly Republican Texas. Neither believes the state is competitive, but uses it as a backdrop to convey information about issues they hope voters will have in mind when they vote. For Trump, it’s border security. For Harris, it is the right to abortion.

Appearing in Austin on Friday, Trump tried to turn Harris’ event into a line of attack tied to one of his favorite topics: immigration.

Hours before Harris’ star-studded appearance with Beyoncé, Willie Nelson, Jessica Alba and others, Trump accused the vice president of meeting with “woke stars” but not the families of people killed by immigrants.

Trump’s trip to Texas, his second stop in the border state in two days, comes as the former president escalates his already dark and apocalyptic rhetoric against illegal immigration.

“We’re like a dumpster for the rest of the world that’s throwing out people it doesn’t want,” Trump told supporters Friday in Austin. Trump continues to promote the baseless notion that foreign governments are actively sending criminals to the United States

Harris said the remark was “another example of how he truly demeans our country.”

“The president of the United States should be someone who elevates the discourse and speaks to the best of us and invests in who we are, not someone like Donald Trump who continually demeans and belittles who Americans are.” ”Harris told reporters in Houston.

Throughout the campaign, Trump regularly appeared with grieving relatives of people who were injured or killed by people living in the country illegally. On Friday, he handed the microphone to the mother of a 12-year-old Texas girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found in June. Prosecutors in the US illegally charged two Venezuelans with capital murder.

“She was just a kid and because of the Biden-Harris policies that we have here… she’s not here anymore,” Alexis Nungaray said.

During a rally in Arizona on Thursday, Trump criticized Harris for the Biden administration’s actions at the border, which he said had “unleashed” an “army of migrant gangs” that “are waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens.”

Trump sees immigration as the issue that won him the White House in 2016. He accuses Harris of committing a “despicable betrayal of America” ​​and “engineering the most egregious betrayal ever committed to our nation by any leader in American history,” even though crime has dropped.

While immigrants have been charged with several high-profile crimes, as Trump has repeatedly highlighted, studies have shown that immigrants – including those who entered the country illegally – are charged with fewer violent crimes than American citizens.

He also spread false theories that Democrats were registering immigrants without legal status to vote.

Rogan’s interview highlights Trump’s focus on masculinity

The interview with Rogan, who records his podcast in Austin, provided another opportunity for the GOP nominee to emphasize the hypermasculine tone that has largely defined his 2024 White House bid.

Trump has made masculinity a central theme of his campaign, appearing on podcasts targeting young male voters and engaging with surrogates who sometimes use vulgar language.

During a Trump rally on Wednesday, former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson called Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz a “weak man” and compared Trump’s return to the White House to a father who comes home ready to punish his misbehaving children.

“When dad comes home, you know what he says?” Carlson asked. “You were a bad girl. You have been a naughty girl and now you are being spanked vigorously.

Rogan and Trump have a complicated relationship. Rogan previously said he previously refused to have Trump on his podcast because he didn’t want to help him.

Earlier this year, Trump criticized Rogan after a podcast host claimed that then-candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. he was the only person running for president who made sense to him. Kennedy has since suspended his bid, endorsed Trump and joined him on the campaign trail.

“Will it be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets booed the next time he steps into a UFC ring?” Trump wrote on his social media site in August, referencing Rogan’s experience as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The podcaster is known for his many hours of interviews for “The Joe Rogan Experience”, which is ranked number one in the United States according to the Spotify charts. He calls women “chicks” and once laughed when a comedian friend of his described repeatedly forcing young women to have sex in comics.