President Donald Trump smashed the speed limit in a desperate race to win back MAGA voters at a rally in Oklahoma.
Trump, 80, left a Peterbilt truck factory outside Dallas just before 6 p.m. Thursday. However, bad weather disrupted his plans to get to Oklahoma for another speech to shore up support ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Trump posted on Truth Social at 6:39 p.m., telling people in Oklahoma “stay tuned—I’ll be there soon!”
He said that because of the weather, planes and helicopters couldn’t land, “so we’re driving up from Texas.”
“They wanted me to postpone the event, and I said, `NO WAY, I’M GOING TO OKLAHOMA!’,” Trump said of the rally for Oklahoma Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei.
The distance between the two venues is around 80 miles, and should usually take one hour and 40 minutes, with a speed limit of 75 mph.
Referring to the heavily armored, custom-built presidential car, Trump wrote, “‘The Beast’ is going faster than it has ever gone before.”
Media traveling with Trump reported that, at one point, their press van reached 98 mph to keep up with the speeding presidential vehicle.
Los Angeles Times reporter Ana Ceballos posted on X, “Your pooler can confirm the motorcade was indeed traveling *very* fast. At one point, your pooler’s van was rolling at 98 mph.”
Trump took the stage at around 7:50 p.m., almost two hours late. On stage, he told his MAGA supporters, “This was not an easy trip.”
The president said he was told they would have to cancel his Oklahoma visit due to the “terrible” weather, and that traveling by helicopter or plane was out of the question.
After being told, “It’s a very long drive,” Trump said he asked, “How fast does The Beast travel?”
“They said, ‘We could go close to 100 miles an hour.’ I said: ‘Get your a---s in that car. We’re going to Oklahoma,” Trump said, as the crowd cheered.
The 80-year-old president is traveling around America ahead of the crucial midterm elections in November, which could see his party punished by his own supporters over his handling of the war with Iran and the economy.
This week, Trump scored the highest disapproval rating of his second term, at 61 percent, weeks before the crucial November midterms.
The September 19-25 Angus Reid USA survey of 1,205 American adults found that just 34 percent approve of the president’s governance, and that his support remains heavily concentrated among his core MAGA base.
