While President Donald Trump was speaking at one of his five Sunday rallies, one of the two scaffolds on which a huge American flag was flying collapsed. Strong winds are apparently the reason for the mishap. According to reports, no one was injured.
Trump was speaking to supporters in Hickory, North Carolina when the collapse occurred. The scaffolding in question was part of two scissor lifts for hoisting the American flag, which were located behind the crowd and also at the tables of the press pool that covered the event.
Here is a video that the New York magazine’s correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, took of the event.
Video from immediately after the scaffolding overturned. pic.twitter.com/6AynAqMVti
– Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) November 1, 2020
The scissor lift on the right can be seen leaning backwards and tilted against a building, while the other stage holds the left side of the flag, on which the stars and the blue field stand upright. The flag in this video is still waving in the wind of North Carolina.
The workers on the scene rushed to lower all the elevators at the rally, including a third one that was draped with lights. Then the workers removed the huge flag and sealed off the areas with tape.
Nuzzle said she had written her story for New York because the reporters had been removed from the scene for fear that something might fall down and perhaps endanger the lives of the reporters.
“I wrote about the collapse of the American flag at the Donald Trump rally in North Carolina. I wrote it in a car because I had to leave the area where the flag was because the security forces feared that something else might fall and kill the reporters,” she tweeted.
The 2020 presidential election is only two days away, on November 3, and the Sunday stop in Hickory, North Carolina, is part of a major attack by Trump, who is visiting critical parts of the swing states. On Sunday alone, stops in Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia were on his schedule.
After Hickory, the President had scheduled stops in Rome, Georgia, and Opa-locka, Florida. On Monday, the schedule includes Fayetteville (North Carolina), Scranton (Pennsylvania), Traverse City (Michigan), Kenosha (Wisconsin) and Grand Rapids (Michigan).
The trump card in most swing states is currently behind the Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Biden has a narrow lead of 0.3 percent over Trump in North Carolina.
This is not the first time the Trump campaign has had a mishap, and this campaign is not the only one. During 2016, a stage collapsed at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. during a live television event. Again, no one was injured during this event.
This is an evolving story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
