Trump events aren’t drawing big protests
NEW YORK, April 4, (AP): When Donald Trump first ran for the White House eight years ago, protesters filled the streets.
His inflammatory rhetoric and often dehumanizing descriptions of immigrants spurred thousands to demonstrate outside his rallies. By this time in 2016, protesters regularly interrupted his speeches, sparking clashes and foreshadowing Trump’s habit of encouraging violence against those he casts as his enemies.
“Knock the crap out of them, would you?” Trump once said as he egged on the crowd to go after protestors on their own - even promising to pay their legal bills.
No longer.
As he runs again with an agenda that is arguably more extreme than his two previous campaigns, mass protests at Trump rallies and appearances are a thing of the past. When Trump returned to New York last week for a hearing in one of his criminal cases, just a smattering of detractors turned up outside the courthouse. During a Midwestern swing Tuesday, Trump was interrupted briefly by a protest in Green Bay, but otherwise encountered minimal opposition.
In a twist, it’s now President Joe Biden who is facing a sustained protest movement, largely by those furious over the administration’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. During his first major rally of the year, Biden’s 22-minute speech was interrupted no less than a dozen times by detractors calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Protesters repeatedly disrupted his celebrity fundraiser last week with former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, as hundreds more demonstrated outside.
Nearly a decade after Trump launched his first campaign, organizers and others who participated in past protests describe a change in tactics as they focus their efforts on other issues or turning out voters in November. Some described a “Trump fatigue” after nearly a decade of outrage.
A judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s bid to delay his April 15 hush money criminal trial until the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity claims he raised in
another of his criminal cases - spurning another of the former president’s ploys to put off the historic trial. Several more are pending. Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan declared the request untimely, ruling that Trump’s lawyers had “myriad opportunities” to raise the immunity issue before they finally did so last month, well after a deadline for pretrial motions had already passed.
The timing of the defense’s March 7 filing “raises real questions about the sincerity and actual purpose of the motion,” Merchan wrote in a six-page decision.
Lawyers for Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, had asked Merchan to adjourn the New York trial indefinitely until Trump’s immunity claim in his Washington, D.C., election interference case is resolved.
Donald Trump and the Republican Party said Wednesday that they raised more than $65.6 million in March as the former president became the presumptive nominee and installed new
party leadership.
Trump and the Republican National Committee closed out the month with $93.1 million in their campaign accounts, a significant increase as they try to catch up to the fundraising of President Joe Biden and the Democrats.
“Our campaign, working together with the RNC, has been steadily ramping up our fundraising efforts, and our March numbers are a testament to the overwhelming support for President Trump by voters all across the spectrum,” Susie Wiles, a senior advisor to Trump’s campaign, said in a statement. “Republicans may not be beneficiaries of the self interested largess from Hollywood and Silicon Valley elites, but President Trump is proud to be supported by donations from voters who are the backbone of this nation, which will fuel Republicans up and down the ballot.”
Biden and the Democratic National Committee have not released fundraising numbers for March, but their political operation said they brought in $53 million in Febrary and closed that month with $155 million cash on hand.