Trump announces first campaign rally of 2024 in Waco as Texas city marks 30th anniversary of sect’s siege

Donald Trump will hold his first rally for the 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas on March 25, on the 30th anniversary of the deadly 51-day law enforcement siege at the Branch Davidians religious cult compound. .

A statement from the Trump campaign announcing the rally highlights his support among Republican voters in Texas in a recent poll by a right-wing media firm, finding the former president leading in the state against his potential 2024 rival. , Ron DeSantis.

A February poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that 56% of Republican voters polled in the poll believe Mr. Trump should run.

Mr Trump, with his campaign hailing Texas as “Trump Country”, was once a force of nature with the state’s GOP, though his political future in the state looks very different in 2024 compared to its campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

Republican United States Representative Chip Roy recently backed the governor of Florida, calling him a “man of conviction.” Governor Greg Abbott also failed to attend Mr. Trump’s campaign rally in October 2020 two days before early voting began.

Mr. Trump’s first rally of his 2024 campaign appears to have been scheduled amid an austere anniversary for the region, marking 30 years since the 1993 siege at the Mount Carmel Center ranch in Elk, Texas, which ended ended with a fire that engulfed the compound and killed 76 people, including children and cult leader David Koresh.

Federal agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms were shot while trying to search the property in February 1993, sparking a siege that ended on April 19.

The announcement of Mr Trump’s campaign rally also comes as the former president potentially faces indictment from prosecutors in his home state of New York involving silent payments to the movie star for adults Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign. His actions are also at the center of an investigation in Georgia, where he sought to pressure election officials to annul the results of the 2020 presidential election after he lost the state to Joe Biden.

Mr. Trump is also at the center of investigations by the US Department of Justice regarding the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 and the mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago property after leaving the White House.