Trantalis favors confrontation

Lauderdale mayor: Get in face of Trump officials

Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis, saying dire times require dramatic action, believes the best way to respond to President Donald Trump’s policies is through in-your-face resistance, not polite civil discourse.

“These days, subtlety doesn’t work,” he said. “I’m sorry that people feel offended when they are out in public and they’re accosted. That’s a consequence of who you are and what you represent.”

“They need to be held accountable for the views they represent, whether they’re at a restaurant table, a street corner or a gathering of their supporters,” Trantalis said during a weekend interview at a Florida Democratic Party conference in Hollywood.

The debate over which approach to use rages because of the Trump administration’s policy, since modified, of separating children from parents when families illegally came into the U.S. at the southern border.

Trantalis’ view is controversial within his party, where others see a more polite response to Trump administration officials as the best approach.

Sylvia Sharps of West Palm Beach, a Democratic candidate for the Palm Beach County Commission, said she doesn’t think the widely publicized confrontation of Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, in restaurant was the right thing to do.

“Leave her alone. What good is that going to do?” she said.

Sharps said it would be fine in her view to approach a Trump administration official to make a comment in a polite, but not confrontational, way.

The family separation issue has been highly unpopular and prompted the heckling of Nielsen a Mexican restaurant. Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was asked to leave a different restaurant.

Critics on the right pounced, accusing the left of a lack of civility. Activists on the left responded that Trump is a champion of incivility.

Then U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., urged people to confront Trump cabinet members wherever they see them.

“You get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on

them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said.

Trump responded by calling her “an extraordinarily low IQ person” and warning her to “be careful what you wish for.” She then cancelled events after reporting a serious death threat against her.

Trump critics like Susan Smith, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus, agree with Waters.

“We’re in in extremely dangerous times and I think we’ve got to use every weapon at our disposal to fight what’s going on,” Smith said.

Of those calling for civility, Smith said, “I’m tired of hearing from them. They’ve been giving us advice for a long time, and things have not turned out so well. Let’s try something different. Children are being held in cages, and you’re talking about civility? Seriously?”

Jim Bonfiglio, the mayor of Ocean Ridge and a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, also wants direct confrontation.

“You need to face deportation with anger because there aren’t enough words to describe the moral depravity of separating parents from children,” he said. “You’ve got to confront it. We’ve been timid too long.”

Richard Cahoon, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, said he’s sympathetic to the sentiments of people doing the confrontations. “I do feel the pain, the anger. I’m deeply offended by the Trump administration.”

But he doesn’t think that’s the right approach.

“My unspoken thoughts are with Congresswoman Waters, but my actions are with the decorum,” Cahoon said. “I think it’s uncivil to treat them uncivilly just because that’s the way they treat us.”