By Jonathan Allen - NBC News
WACO, Texas — Thirty years ago, federal agents besieged a compound in Waco, Texas, occupied by cult leader David Koresh and his anti-government supporters for 51 days.
The siege ended in a shootout on April 19, 1993 that left 86 dead, after Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the FBI to storm the location.
Former President Donald Trump has chosen this city to hold his first major electoral rally this Saturday for the 2024 presidential campaign.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump near Mar-a-Lago, his Florida mansion, on March 20, 2023. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
The act will take place at the end of a turbulent week, after the tycoon stated through his social networks that he would be arrested on Tuesday for the alleged bribe he paid to the porn actress Stormy Daniels so that she would not speak publicly about the relationship they had. , which is being investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
"Donald has a rally in Waco this Saturday," Mary Trump, the former president's niece and a strong critic of his, wrote on Twitter.
"It's a ploy to remind his cult of the infamous Waco siege in 1993, where an anti-government cult clashed with the FBI. Dozens of people died. He wants the same violent chaos to rescue him from justice," she said.
The former president has strongly criticized government officials investigating him, issuing increasingly dark warnings about what may happen if he is indicted.
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But as much as it is impossible to ignore the obvious spectacle of an anti-establishment candidate stoking thousands of his supporters at the site of a confrontation between federal agents and anti-government conspiracy theorists, there are more traditional political reasons for Trump to choose Waco as his venue. launch of a new battery of rallies.
As he seeks the Republican Party's presidential nomination for the third time in a row, Trump and his team fully understand the importance of Texas in winning delegates to the Republican National Convention.
The state is the second, after California, with the largest number of delegates, and will influence the final tally more than the first four states combined - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
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"It's guaranteed to be a crowd and it's part, I think, of the success they can have going to red states," said a former Trump campaign adviser.
“He is intimidating.
It's a show of force.
Here are 10, 15,000, whatever, people in a room and no one else can do that,” he added.
It also fits their basic pattern of choosing sites that are outside of the big cities, but accessible to them.
"President Trump will hold his first campaign rally in Waco, in the state of Texas, because it is centrally located and close to the four largest metropolitan areas in Texas," justified his campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung. "It is the ideal place for as many supporters from across the state and neighboring states to attend this historic rally" as they want.
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Trump aides dismiss the possibility that holding a rally in Waco on the 30th anniversary of the siege could show sympathy to anti-government voters.
“That sounds like things that people from New York or [Washington] DC who have never even been to Texas would say,” said a Trump adviser.
