Debunked: Bus company shoots down Trump campaign conspiracy that they bussed in Harris supporters from out of state

The general manager of a Massachusetts bus company is disputing falsehoods spread by senior officials on the Donald Trump campaign over buses used to move Kamala Harris supporters to and from a parking lot during a candidate visit this week.

Michael Costa, general manager of the Yankee Line bus service that provided the distinctive yellow buses used at the campaign event, said the vehicles were only used in the state of New Hampshire to move people from parking at the nearby Water Country Water Park and the event venue, Throwback Brewing in North Hampton.

In an interview, Costa said, “The event hosts simply secured the Water Country parking lot and then hired us to provide shuttle bus service in the parking lot to the event venue, just simply because there’s parking space there.” The buses, she added, were “just transporting people within the state of New Hampshire between the parking lot and the venue.”

Multiple senior staff from the Trump campaign, however, pushed falsehoods on the buses, stating that the vehicles from the Yankee Line bus company were used to bring in out-of-state supporters

The Trump War Room social media account posted, “Kamala Harris is importing people from Massachusetts into New Hampshire on busses to try and fill her event in the Granite State.”

“Will the press covering Kamala’s event today ask why she can’t get any real New Hampshire residents to attend?!” Trump spokesperson and former New Hampshire Republican congressional candidate Karoline Leavitt posted on social media with a screen grab of a text message from a “local New Hampshire radio host” saying that he is “getting messages from listeners” that “four buses full of people” from Massachusetts turned up at the rally.

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Despite the claims being easily disproved, large conservative social media accounts picked up the claims and distributed them widely.

New Hampshire Republican leaders, however, did not choose to follow the Trump campaign’s lead in a remarkable show of disunity at a time when Trump’s campaign in the state has been reported to be on life support.

Political reporter and former New Hampshire reporter Jake Lahut addressed the falsehoods on social media, saying they were a sign of desperation by the Trump camp.

“The Trump campaign is spreading unsubstantiated rumors about busses full of people from Massachusetts coming to the Kamala event in NH today. There’s nothing more quintessentially New Hampshire than imagining ‘full busses of people’ coming up from Mass., but it’s most often evoked around voter ID laws and, frankly, losing campaigns.”

Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist with deep New Hampshire ties said the attempt to use photos of buses as proof the Harris campaign was bringing in supporters from out of state was “silly.”

“The notion of shuttle buses going from parking lots to large rallies is nothing new in New Hampshire and beyond that, if you looked at the license plates at any New Hampshire Trump rally you would see just as many out-of-state plates as New Hampshire ones. This faux controversy is silly. No serious person is talking about this — they are looking at candidate and surrogate visits, and more importantly, poll numbers.”

Nathan Shrader, Associate Professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at New England College, said that, for the Trump campaign, lying big and getting away with it was just business as usual.

“The Trump campaign is doing what it does best: generating lies faster than anyone can possibly keep up with. They are going down this path because they see this election slipping away, but have no serious strategy beyond creating and disseminating fake news to fool the public.”