Skip to content Skip to footer

Dozens of Trump Backers Required Medical Attention Due to Heat at NC Rally

Trump is a noted denier of the climate crisis, frequently decrying climate change as a “hoax.”

Event medics respond to a heat-related call after a person passed out while waiting in line ahead of Republican Presidential nominee former President Donald Trump's campaign rally at the Bojangles Coliseum on July 24, 2024, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Several people who attended GOP nominee former President Donald Trump’s rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday required medical attention due to heat, with more than a dozen people being transported to nearby hospitals.

Medics at the event responded to 44 heat-related calls, including people suffering from heat illness and bouts of fainting. At least one person sent to the hospital was reported in critical condition. Another person onsite suffered from cardiac arrest.

Although the rally took place indoors, rally goers appeared at the arena and waited outside for several hours. Temperatures reached 89 degrees, with humidity and direct sun beating down on attendees.

This isn’t the first event where Trump supporters have suffered from extreme heat.

In June, a campaign event in Arizona saw 11 people hospitalized due to high temperatures leading to similar medical problems. Heat was also problematic during Trump’s 2020 run — 17 individuals required medical attention (including 12 who were hospitalized) at an event in Florida that year when attendees were subjected to high-80-degree temperatures and humid conditions for several hours.

The latest episode of excessive heat conditions at a Trump rally comes on the heels of the two hottest days ever recorded on Earth. Sunday broke the previous record, only for Monday to hit even hotter temperatures on average across the globe.

Despite repeated instances of his own supporters suffering the effects of excessive heat, likely due to the climate crisis, Trump continues to be a denier of climate change, repeatedly describing it as a “hoax” over the past several years, including this year as a candidate for the White House.

As president, Trump undermined dozens of environmental regulations, including many that were previously established to address the warming of the planet. Trump also avoided a question on the climate crisis during his debate with President Joe Biden in June, refusing to say if his future administration would “take any action” to address it and instead ranting about unrelated topics.

Environmentalists expect another Trump presidency to be a disaster for the climate.

“Trump already has a record on pretty much denying the climate crisis and repealing environmental regulations and essentially just clearing the path for fossil fuel expansion. … We know what he did last time, and we have an even better understanding of how backwards it could get,” said John Noël, senior climate campaigner with Greenpeace USA.

But it’s becoming increasingly hard for Trump and other Republicans to deny the crisis is real. There’s even some evidence to suggest that the attempt on Trump’s life could be blamed, in part, on the observed rise in temperatures. According to at least one whistleblower, a law enforcement officer was supposed to be stationed on the roof where a shooter had targeted Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month. That officer, however, allegedly abandoned their post because it was too hot to stay up there.
Temperatures were indeed much higher than usual in that part of the state that day. In nearby Pittsburgh, temperatures exceeded 90 degrees, well above the projected high of around 83 degrees for the date the rally took place. Indeed, due to the shooting, heat-related medical situations at the Butler rally that day were largely ignored.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy