Trump to Kick Off 2020 Campaign in a City That Loathes Him

[babylonsister]

Trump to Kick Off 2020 Campaign in a City That Loathes Him
The president’s supporters were lined up outside the Amway Center more than 40 hours before his official campaign kickoff in Orlando, but street demonstrators were also preparing.
Asawin Suebsaeng
White House Reporter
Published 06.18.19 5:30AM ET

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The Trump campaign and its allies have explicitly staked out Florida as perhaps the key to keeping the White House in Republican hands come 2021 and have already pledged massive planning and resources to making sure the Sunshine State stays in the electoral tank for Trump. Orlando, however, is hardly Trump country. The city, as well as the Orange County area surrounding it, leans heavily liberal, though flanked by neighboring counties that are decidedly redder and Trump-ier.

And when the president arrives on Tuesday, he’ll also be met just a few blocks from the Amway Center by street demonstrators and a progressive opposition telling him to go to hell and get out of their city. At 5 p.m. ET, three hours before the president is scheduled to take the stage, organizers and activists are set to stage their own “Win With Love” protest and counter-programming outside of Stonewall Bar Orlando, a gay bar named after the historic Stonewall Inn in New York City. The roster of anti-Trump speakers and performers includes activists from marginalized and minority communities, a transgender individual barred by Trump from serving in the U.S. military, a mariachi band, and a drag performer. The “Baby Trump” balloon is also expected to make an appearance.

On the rainy Monday evening before Trump’s big day, organizers for the protest hosted a sign-making party on the second floor of Stonewall Orlando, with placards ranging from railing against Trump’s family separation policy to dinging the president for the size of the deficit. The party featured Brandon Wolf, a Pulse nightclub survivor and activist who helped organize Tuesday’s event. At the bar, Wolf discussed his best friend, Drew Leinonen, 32, who died in the attack on Pulse in June 2016, and how his memory has helped inform Wolf’s political activism in the Trump era.

“I always tell this story, which is from the night of the Pulse shooting: The last words my best friend said to me were ‘You know what the world doesn’t say enough is that we love each other,’” Wolf said. “And that’s stayed with me in the years since, and that’s what I hope to see tomorrow—people coming out and loving and supporting one another, and showing solidarity.”

Leinonen, Wolf said, was a “big Hillary Clinton supporter” and donor before he was murdered that night. Wolf described himself as more politically apathetic before the Pulse massacre but said he was moved to start working for liberal and social justice causes in its wake. He said he hadn’t started regularly watching cable news until after the shooting and was appalled by how cable news channels would “often talk and Hillary and Trump, but not about the people affected in the community by the massacre.”

Shortly after the shooting, then-candidate Trump tweeted that the mass murderer’s slaughter of 49 people at the gay nightclub in Orlando proved he was right all along about the threat of Muslim terrorists. It’s one of many reasons Wolf considers Trump a “monster” today, three years after that horrific night.

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-to-kick-off-2020-presidential-re-election-campaign-in-orlando-florida-a-city-that-loathes-him?ref=home

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Perhaps every city needs to demand payment in advance since other prior events are still...

trying to collect their funds from recently held rump fests...

[ananda]

2. Can't wait till they get that baby blimp up!!!

Go protesters!!!!!!