Trump blasts fire marshal for restricting crowd size

Donald Trump's new favorite target: the fire marshal for his various rallies and town halls.

Trump was back at it again on Monday in Columbus, Ohio, days after getting stuck in a Colorado elevator for 30 minutes ahead of a rally only to be rescued by the Colorado Springs Fire Department and subsequently attacking the fire marshal at the later rally.


“Hey, maybe they’re a Hillary person," he said. "Could that be possible? Probably. I don’t think there are too many of them.”

Before Monday's event in Ohio, Trump pulled reporters aside at the Greater Columbus Convention Center to complain about the restrictions on the size of the crowd.

“They said in this massive building, you’re not allowed to have any more than 1,000 people, and that’s nonsense," Trump said. "We could have had four, five, six thousand people. They’ve all been turned away. You saw them."

Trump called it a "disgrace," remarking that they were turned away for "political reasons ... and that's too bad."

"So have 1,000 people in there. They won’t allow any more," Trump said. "The fire marshal said he’s not allowed to allow any more even though the building holds many thousands of people. So I just wanted to tell you that. That’s politics at its lowest. You ought to check it out, but it’s really politics at its lowest.”

Shortly after taking the stage, Trump held up a photo of a “totally empty” Hillary Clinton rally before suggesting that the city’s mayor Andrew Ginther, who is a Democrat, also had something to do with the restriction.

“Now Hillary Clinton, I have a picture here which is pretty sad. She had last week, or a couple of days ago, look at it, totally empty,” Trump said. “Is the mayor a Democrat? Is he a Democrat over here? That’s what I heard. He ought to be ashamed of himself. They turned away thousands of people, but that makes it better for you, right? No, but it’s very sad.”

Steve Martin, a spokesman for the Columbus Division of Fire, said the capacity for the event was determined based on the fire code at a meeting last week. Martin told POLITICO that the limit was set at 1,000 people based on the square footage of the space and the number of exits, adding that Trump’s claim that the space could have held more people could only have been an assumption.

“He saw the outside of the building,” Martin said. “What he did not understand was that there were other things going on in the building. That’s about the only reason I can think [as to why] he could have made those comments.”

Martin said he did not hear Trump’s criticism of the fire marshal directly, but praised the fire marshal’s credentials.

“I would say the fire marshal is an assistant chief that has come up through the ranks and it’s not an appointed position and any decisions that were made are absolutely not politically motivated,” he said.