Pro-Trump Black Influencer With 200K TikTok Followers Left in Tears After Being Kicked Out of Ken Paxton's Texas Rally

A Black conservative TikTok creator who joined the Republican Party two years ago and has campaigned for Donald Trump has been filmed fighting back tears after being escorted out of a rally for Ken Paxton. Paxton is the state's Republican nominee for the US Senate.

Thelma Louise, who has more than 200,000 followers, says she drove two hours to the San Antonio event on Sunday, 18 October, which was promoting early voting. In videos posted to her TikTok account, she says staff told her that Paxton's campaign manager wanted her gone.

One clip shows a speaker addressing the crowd from a lectern flanked by US and Texas flags. The caption over it reads: 'I was asked to leave right after I recorded this & I'm a REPUBLICAN that has done nothing but support my party.'

In a second video, filmed outside the venue as she wipes her eyes, the on-screen text says: 'All I was doing was recording footage to share online.'

She Says She Was Given No Explanation

As she is escorted out of the venue, Louise can be heard asking: 'And there's no one that I can talk to about this?' Outside, she says: 'I was just asked to leave this event, and I did nothing wrong.'

Louise says she still does not know why she was removed. Her videos do not show her causing a disturbance before she was escorted out, although the clips cannot show everything that happened at the event. The Paxton campaign has not publicly explained the removal.

In follow-up videos, she displayed media badges from previous Republican gatherings, including the Texas Youth Summit and a Republican midterm convention in Dallas. She also said she left the Democratic Party two years ago and volunteered for Trump's campaign as a 'Trump Force' captain.

A Reporter Was Also Asked to Leave Days Earlier

The incident follows the removal of a journalist from another Paxton event. A reporter wrote that he was approached at the launch of Paxton's bus tour in Rockwall on Saturday, 17 October, and told: 'We've looked up your credentials. We're asking you to leave.'

The campaign said in a statement that the reporter had bypassed the press registration process and refused to register when asked. The reporter disputed that, writing that he had asked to register and was refused, and that a police officer escorted him to his car.

It is not clear from Louise's videos whether she held credentials for the San Antonio event, and the two incidents have not been linked.

The Race Heads Into Early Voting

Paxton, who won the Republican nomination in May by beating Senator John Cornyn in a runoff with Trump's backing, faces Democrat James Talarico in the US Senate election on 3 November. Early voting began in Texas on Monday, 19 October.

A University of Houston Hobby School poll showed Talarico leading Paxton by two percentage points among likely voters. If Talarico wins, he would be the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas in more than three decades, according to TIME.