President Trump canceled a second rally scheduled for later this week as Hurricane Florence nears the East Coast.
Trump’s campaign announced Tuesday that a rally planned for Thursday in Cape Girardeau, Mo., has been canceled.
“With Hurricane Florence on its way, we determined that this is the safest decision,” the Trump campaign’s chief operating officer Michael Glassner said in a statement.
Trump would have campaigned for Josh Hawley, who is competing to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. It would have been his third rally in the state since he launched his presidential campaign.
The campaign has also canceled a rally Friday in Jackson, Miss., where he would have campaigned on behalf of Cindy Hyde-Smith in her race for the Senate.
Hurricane Florence intensified to a Category 4 storm on Monday. The hurricane is currently approaching the Carolinas with maximum sustained winds near 130 miles per hour. Once it makes landfall by the end of the week, the storm system is expected to dump heavy rain on areas of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, including Washington, D.C.
The governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia have all declared a state of emergency and Trump approved emergency declarations for North Carolina and South Carolina late Monday evening, unlocking federal assistance to state and local responses to the storm.
