Trump makes Michigan rally goers wait in the cold for hours to record Joe Rogan’s podcast

TRAVERSE CITY, MI. TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump he was nearly three hours late to a rally in Michigan on Friday, prompting thousands of his supporters to desert him while others huddled in cold weather to await the former president at an outdoor rally in the battleground state.

The Republican presidential candidate was detained for an interview with Joe Rogan. most listened to podcaster in the countryit stretched out over three hours in Austin, Texas. Trump is aggressively courting young male voters, among whom Rogan is widely popular. The interview was published on Friday evening.

Democrat Kamala Harris was also in Texas On Friday, perform with superstar Beyoncé in Houston at an event promoting the conservative state’s abortion ban, which was put in place after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Three of the justices who voted to overturn Roe were nominated by Trump.

Minutes before Trump’s rally in Michigan was set to begin at 7:30 pm ET, his spokesman posted on social media site X that Trump had just left Texas, more than a two-hour flight away. Trump recorded a video from his plane urging his supporters to stay, noting that it was Friday night and promising: “We’re going to have a good time tonight.”

Trump eventually took the stage at the Traverse City airport, where temperatures had dropped to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), and apologized.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “We’re so connected and I thought you wouldn’t mind too much because we’re trying to win.”

The visitors who had not left, bundled up, some with blankets, waited for him to land. The crowd was rowdy and seemed distant as North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon tried to kill time on stage. Hats were thrown to visitors.

Some of those who stayed here took it in stride.

“Well, we’d rather they were on time,” said Karen Targanski of Bay City, Michigan, more than two hours away. She added that, nevertheless, “it was worth the wait.”

With 11 days before the election, Trump and Harris left battleground states and made brief forays into solidly Republican Texas. Neither believes the state is competitive, but they are using it as a backdrop to inform the public about issues they hope will be on voters’ minds when they cast ballots. For Trump, it’s border security. For Harris, it’s abortion rights.

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

Hours before Harris’ appearance with Beyoncé, Willie Nelson, Jessica Alba and others, Trump accused the vice president of hanging out with “woke celebrities” but not with the families of people killed by migrants.

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 are like a trash can for the rest of the world, where they throw people they don’t want,” Trump told supporters Friday in Austin. Trump continues to promote the baseless idea that foreign governments are actively sending criminals to the United States.

Harris said the remark was “just another example of how he is actually putting our country down.”

“The President of the United States should be someone who elevates the discourse and talks about why we are better than everyone else and invests in what we are, not someone like Donald Trump who constantly degrades and demeans what the American people are . Harris told reporters in Houston.

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

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

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

Trump views immigration as the issue that won him the White House in 2016. He accuses Harris of committing an “evil betrayal of America” ​​and of “orchestrating the most egregious betrayal that any leader in American history has ever committed against our people.” although crime has decreased.

While migrants have been charged with some of the high-profile crimes that 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.

His interview with Rogan, who is taping his podcast in Austin, gave the GOP nominee another opportunity to underscore the hypermasculine tone that has so much defined his 2024 White House bid.

Trump did masculinity a central theme of his campaign, appearing on podcasts targeting young male voters and using surrogates who sometimes use crude language.

At Trump’s 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 coming home ready to punish his misbehaving children.

“When dad comes home, do you know what he says?” – asked Carlson. “You were a bad girl. You’ve been a bad girl, and now you’re going to get a hard spanking.

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

Earlier this year, Trump criticized Rogan after the podcaster said then-candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was the only person running for president that 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, citing Rogan’s experience as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The podcast is known for its hours-long interviews on The Joe Rogan Experience, which is number one in the US according to the Spotify charts. He calls women “chicks” and once laughed when a comedian friend of his described repeatedly forcing young women in comics to have sex.

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Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report.