Trump supporters leave his rally amid 3-hour delay while 30K pack Harris-Beyonce event
Vice President Kamala Harris is holding one of the biggest rallies of her 2024 presidential campaign at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston, Texas alongside pop star Beyoncé. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump's crowd appears to be streaming out of his rally in Traverse City, Michigan.
NBC reporter Megan Lebowitz tweeted that a "steady stream" of Trump supporters are currently leaving his rally at an airplane hangar in Traverse City — which is in the Northwestern corner of the Mitten State — due to an hours-long delay. According to Lebowitz, the former president was expected to take the stage at 7:30 PM local time. However, MailOnline deputy editor Geoff Earle reported that Trump's interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in Austin, Texas delayed him significantly.
At approximately 8:30 PM Eastern Time, the ex-president's campaign played a video recorded from Trump's private jet in which he said he would be another two hours late before arriving at the hangar.
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"We wanna just win. I said, 'will they understand in Traverse City? Otherwise I'll be very upset with myself,' and I think you will," Trump said in the video. "It's a Friday night so we can sit around, we'll do an extra-special job."
Ed O'Keefe, who is CBS News' senior White House correspondent, also tweeted video of Trump supporters leaving his rally, writing: "Trump’s decision to spend hours with @joerogan not going over well with Michiganders, some of whom are leaving as they learn the former president is still More than an hour away."
Meanwhile, Harris' energetic, star-studded rally has approximately 30,000 attendees, according to CBS News reporter Aaron Navarro. In addition to Beyoncé, country music legend Willie Nelson also performed at Harris' Houston rally. In a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) by NBC News' Yamiche Alcindor, thousands of supporters were seen both on the floor and in the bleachers.
"They say it's their biggest campaign event yet," Navarro tweeted, quoting a source on Harris' campaign team.
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Harris' Houston rally is focused on abortion rights. She and her speakers are specifically on Texas' draconian abortion ban that the Republican-controlled legislature passed in 2021. That law — Senate Bill 8 — bans all abortions after five or six weeks, after the fetal heartbeat is detected.
Earlier this year, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health found that infant deaths actually increased after Texas' abortion ban went into effect. And Texas' infant death rate far outpaced the national infant death rate since Senate Bill 8 was implemented.
"[A]nalysis of monthly death certificate data in Texas and the rest of the United States found that between 2021 and 2022, infant deaths in Texas rose from 1,985 to 2,240, a year-over-year increase of 255 deaths," researchers wrote. "This corresponds to a 12.9 percent increase in infant deaths in Texas versus a 1.8 percent increase in infant deaths in the rest of the U.S. during the same period."
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