Donald Trump was stuck in an elevator for half an hour

Donald Trump rides an escalator
(Image credit: Christopher Gregory/Getty Images)

Maybe Republican nominee Donald Trump chose wisely after all when he took a dramatic escalator ride to announce his campaign for president last year — because you can't get trapped in an escalator.

You can, however, get trapped in an elevator, which is what happened to Trump in Colorado Friday right before he was due to give a speech at a campaign rally. As local news outlets reported Saturday afternoon, the Colorado Springs Fire Department had to rescue Trump after a mechanical problem in the elevator he was riding at the Mining Exchange Hotel trapped the candidate between the first and second floors.

"The firefighters were able to secure the elevator, open the top elevator hatch, lower a ladder into the elevator which allowed all individuals to self-evacuate, including Mr. Trump, onto the second floor lobby area," said a department representative, Steven Wilch.

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Trump arrived at his event half an hour late and proceeded to criticize the local fire marshal for capping rally attendance for safety reasons.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.