Vice President Mike Pence had some hiccups today in the first hour of his tour of Pennsylvania when his campaign bus got in a fender binder and then two police officers on motorcycles went down.
The campaign bus swiped a dump truck on its side, bending the vehicle’s fender.
Pence had to get out of the bus and transfer to a limo.
A Pence official called it a ‘minor fender bender.’
The vice president was not injured in the incident, which came on the same day of news that the U.S. economy shrank by 33 per cent in the April-June quarter, the worst quarterly plunge ever.
The bus was left behind as the motorcade continued but then two motorcycle cops went down, causing another delay.
Pence got out of his vehicle to speak to one of the officers as emergency medical personnel checked the two men out.
Pence did not appear to be wearing a mask when speaking to the officer.
An ambulance was on the scene as one usually travels in motorcade.
All this happened while Pence was in route to a ‘Cops for Trump’ rally.
Per @KDKA —
.@VP Pence “tour bus has been involved in a minor accident with a dump truck on the way to a campaign stop outside of Pittsburgh.”https://t.co/oTYtcF9ZqY pic.twitter.com/4LgGlMvhWn
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) July 30, 2020
The accident happened in rural Allegheny County on a very sharp curve and about 10 minutes into the ride.
Pence is campaigning in western Pennsylvania to show the Trump administration’s support for law enforcement and to shore up support in the critical battleground state.
Polls show Joe Biden leading Trump in Pennsylvania, the state where Biden was born.
The presumptive Democratic nominee leads by 6 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
But the Trump campaign is determined to keep Pennsylvania competitive, particularly as Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state in 20 years when he picked it up in 2016.
Many of the supporters lined up for the ‘Cops for Trump’ event were not wearing masks, according to a video posted by Marc Lotter, a spokesman for the Trump campaign on the scene.
There was also little social distancing among the crowd.
The event took place on the same day Herman Cain died of the coronavirus. The former presidential candidate was at Trump’s Tulsa rally where several campaign staff and Secret Service agents tested positive for the disease.
Cain did not wear a mask at the rally.