Biden staff call 911 after bus swarmed by Trump supporters on Texas highway

Biden staff call 911 after bus swarmed by Trump supporters on Texas highway

AUSTIN, Texas – A caravan of vehicles displaying Trump campaign flags and signs swarmed a Biden campaign bus between San Antonio and Austin on Friday afternoon, leading the Democrats on board to call 911 and cancel the Austin close of their “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” tour.

According to the Biden campaign, the vehicles surrounded the bus, trying to slow it down in the middle of the highway or run it off the road. Biden staff notified 911 and local law enforcement, and, they reported, local law enforcement helped the bus to reach its Austin destination.

Neither Former Vice President Joe Biden nor California Sen. Kamala Harris were on the bus, CNN reports.

“Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” Tariq Thowfeek, Texas communications director of the Biden campaign, said in a statement Saturday.

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No one was injured. No one was arrested. It is evident on a video of the incident that there was a glancing but obvious contact between a black Trump pickup and a white car apparently being driven behind the bus by a Biden campaign staffer, but no apparent serious or disabling damage.

This is a traffic violation and attempted homicide. Why hasn’t anyone been arrested? pic.twitter.com/QnfF4vXMQn — haunting student debt owners (@mcbyrne) October 31, 2020

On Saturday, Trump shared an edited video that appears to be of the incident, tweeting "I love Texas!" in all caps.

The incident occurred in the midst on the biggest day of the presidential campaign yet for Texas Democrats as Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris spent a full day campaigning in the state, which is now viewed as a tossup in Tuesday’s election. Harris made appearances in Fort Worth, McAllen and Houston.

The state party and the Biden campaign did not seek to draw much attention to the highway encounter between the Biden-Harris bus and one of the car caravans of Trump supporters that have come to be known as Trump Trains.

But other observers sought to draw attention to what they considered a potentially perilous situation. They included Dr. Eric Cervini, a historian and author from Los Angeles who came to Texas to help the Biden campaign.

These tactics have no place in Texas, my home state, and no place in America.

Please vote. Please volunteer this weekend. The future of our democracy is at stake. pic.twitter.com/G0O4yg2vnJ — Dr. Eric Cervini (@ericcervini) October 31, 2020

Cervini was on the scene and posted video and a series of tweets, describing the event as an “ambush” by armed Trump supporters in pickup trucks with Trump flags seeking to run the Biden bus off the road

“They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car,” Cervini tweeted.

Follow Jonathan Tilove on Twitter: @JTiloveTX