Trump cancels 3 out of 4 weekend rallies due to icy weather

Washington, Jan 13 (IANS) Former US President Donald Trump has cancelled three out of four rallies scheduled for this weeked due to icy weather caused by a major winter storm that has led to heavy snowfall across large parts of the country.

Trump has cancelled two rallies that he was slated to hold on Saturday in Sioux City and Atlantic and will only attend a tele-rally featuring Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird in the evening, reports CNN.

The former President is still scheduled to hold one in-person rally on Sunday in Indianola.

His campaign also canceled the second rally he was slated to hold in Cherokee and will instead hold a tele-rally with Iowa state Representative Bobby Kaufmann.

After the cancellations were announced, Trump speculated that the extreme weather in Iowa -- where the 2024 election cycle kicks off on January 15 -- could be good for his campaign ahead of the upcoming caucuses, CNN reported.

“You have the worst weather, I guess, in recorded history, but maybe that’s good because our people are more committed than anybody else so maybe it’s actually a good thing for us. But we have to make sure we caucus on Monday,” Trump said in a video posted to X on Friday

The former President said he would “get there sometime around Saturday night or something – one way or the other I’m getting there”.

“I’ll get to see you on Sunday and Monday and maybe Saturday night late. It’s going to be a little bit of a trek, nobody knows how exactly we’re going to get there, but we’re going to figure it out. And we wouldn’t miss it for anything.

“We have record cold weather, record snowfall, record everything, but we will not miss it,” he added.

As a result of the Arctic blast, the National Weather Service has issued weather alerts in nearly every state, as snow is in the forecast into Saturday from as far west as Oregon to as far east as Maine, the BBC reported.

More than 70 million people are under winter weather alerts.

Temperatures are expected to dip to -45 degrees Celsius in some areas.

Forecasters have called it a "life-threatening winter weather".