President Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday to defend a caravan of his supporters who are accused of aggressively surrounding a Joe Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway last week, saying “these patriots did nothing wrong.”
Trump’s tweet came hours after the FBI announced that it was “aware ... and investigating” the Friday incident that led Democrats to cancel an event there later the same day.
On Sunday, the president included a screenshot of the FBI statement, and said: “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!”
A day earlier, Trump retweeted the now viral video of his supporters surrounding the Biden campaign bus, adding, “I LOVE TEXAS!”
The video shows a scene reminiscent of the movie “Mad Max,” with a group of several cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — intentionally boxing in the campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin.
The video showed the bus surrounded on all four sides as it traveled full speed along Interstate 35.
Neither Biden nor his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, was on board, according to The Associated Press.
At one point, one of the pickup trucks in the Trump caravan appears to graze an SUV behind the bus, whose driver managed to maintain control and avoided a more serious accident.
After studying videos of the incident over the weekend, officials with the San Marcos Police Department said that a staffer in Joe Biden’s camp may have actually caused the minor collision.
“The at-fault vehicle may be the white SUV and the victim appears to be the black truck,” the police department said in a statement, according to a report by Yahoo News.
The Biden bus had requested a police escort, but traffic kept police from reaching the vehicle before it left town.
Katie Naranjo, chair of the Travis County Democratic Party said in a tweet that Trump supporters followed the Biden bus through central Texas “to intimidate Biden supporters.”
“They ran into a person’s car, yelling curse words and threats. Don’t let bullies win, vote,” she wrote.
The episode may have been organized, according to eyewitness accounts.
A reporter for CBS Austin shared video to Twitter showing Trump supporters scrambling to their vehicles after seeing the bus pass by on a city street before getting on the highway.
There were also similar episodes over the weekend, as other caravans of Trump supporters also blocked the Mario Cuomo Bridge in New York, and snarled traffic on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, according to AP. Videos posted online showed some of the supporters getting out of their vehicles, cheering and waving Trump flags.
An FBI spokesperson said the bureau had no comment about the president’s comments, AP reported.
Trump’s tweet come as tensions remained high between the president and FBI Director Christopher Wray, and as Trump has pressed the Justice Department and FBI to act against his rivals, including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden himself.
The president has also told people around him that he is frustrated with Wray over the FBI director’s public statements on issues like voting fraud, Russian election interference and Antifa, and has discussed the possibility of removing Wray if he wins reelection.
Information provided by The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
