Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Florida Trump supporters mourn ending
Sadness. Anger. Disgust. South Florida supporters of President Donald Trump say those are the emotions they’re feeling as they contemplate the end of his presidency and the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Some are in mourning, expressing feelings of despair, and won’t even watch the new president’s inauguration on TV. Others have heard so many claims that Biden and other Democrats are socialists that they say they’re apprehensive. And
some are expressing rage — at Republican leaders they think didn’t do enough to keep Trump in office.
“I feel like I’m not in my skin. It’s a horrible feeling. I don’t like what they did to the president,” said Florine Goldfarb.
Goldfarb, of Pembroke Pines, campaigned for Trump in 2016 — and was an alternate delegate on his behalf to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland — and continued working on his behalf through his unsuccessful reelection effort.
Candace Rojas, a Trump supporter in Palm Beach — the town in which the president is expected to take up residence once he’s no longer occupying the White House — is similarly downcast.
“I feel sad for America,” Rojas said.
Welcome home
Some supporters are cheered, a little, by Trump’s expected arrival in Palm Beach County.
“I’m very much looking forward to welcoming the president home to Palm Beach County. It’s his home where he has his fan base and where he has the most support,” said Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. “We want him to know that he has friends here in Palm Beach County — for a long time, even before he ran for president.”
The White House said Trump will depart 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Wednesday morning and Trump is breaking with tradition and won’t attend Biden’s inauguration.
The White House has not publicly said that he’s heading to Florida, though it’s been widely reported he plans to reside, for a time at least, at his Mar-a-Lago Club, the resort he owns in Palm Beach. In 2019, Trump declared he was no longer a resident of his native New York and was henceforth a Florida resident.
Other reports have indicated his two daughters, Ivanka and Tiffany, are headed for Miami, and that his eldest son, Don Jr., was looking for a place to live in Jupiter.
Since the beginning of his presidency, when Trump would visit for frequent golf weekends and stays at Mar-a-Lago, supporters have turned out at Palm Beach International Airport and along the route form the airport to the club.
Trump supporters said they plan to show their support whenever he arrives. “He has a lot of love from people,” Rojas said.
Annie Marie Delgado, a Palm Beach Gardens Trump supporter, said she’s encouraging her network to turn out. “We are going to welcome him home,” she said. “There’s no stopping that.”
As of Friday, Joe Budd said, he had no details. But whenever it is, he’ll be among the “a group of people to give him a nice reception as he comes back in,” he said, adding, “I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of mixed emotion.”
Budd is Palm Beach County’s state Republican committeeman and president of Trump Club 45 USA, a political club that has regularly drawn more than 1,000 people to its meetings.
Tuning out
Regardless of whether they plan to show up in person to demonstrate support for Trump, one thing his South Florida supporters say they won’t be doing is watching Biden’s inaugural on Wednesday. “No. No. No,” Goldfarb said. “This guy that’s going to be inaugurated is not my president.”
When Scott Newmark, president of Broward-based Americans For Trump, posted on his Facebook page the outgoing president’s announcement that he wouldn’t attend Biden’s inauguration, there was swift reaction.
“I’m wearing all black, shutting off my TV when I’m home from work, and lighting a St. Jude candle to pray for our country,” one woman wrote, adding that she was “mourning over this injustice.”
“Nobody plans on watching it that I know,” Budd said.
A nationwide poll Friday from the Pew Research Center found 53% of Americans plan to watch Biden’s swearing in. There is deep division, with 80% of Democrats and just 25% of Republicans planning to do so.
Republican divide
Republicans in South Florida, as in the rest of the state and the nation, are at a crossroads trying to figure out where their party goes from here.
Many are till devoted to Trump. Some believe he’d be starting a second term if other Republicans, especially elected officials, did more to advance his cause. And others want to replace some elected Republicans with people who are even more devoted for Trump.
“Amongst Trump supporters there is tremendous anger at the establishment of the Republican Party. They feel betrayed, and many are leaving the party, and vowing not to support this party in the future,” said Scott Newmark, president of Americans for Trump, a Broward-based club.
“There is a tremendous split, and there will be a reckoning in the next several months within the Republican Party, between what I call the Trump-MAGA constituency, and the [party] establishment, which at this moment today is not reconcilable,” Newmark said. “There’s a big divide. There’s no kumbaya amongst Republicans. There’s a real deep split. It’s not going to be easily smoothed over.”
Tom Powers, elected last month as Broward Republican Party chairman after serving as vice chairman and a club president, said acknowledged there is discontent among some Trump supporters. “I think there is a level of frustration with some. That’s understood,” he said, adding that “frustration should not turn into abandonment.”
Some, including Budd, said there may be primary challenges to some incumbent Republicans. On Friday, he said he’d like to see U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Panhandle Republican who is one of Trump’s most prominent supporters, challenge U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in the 2022 primary.
Delgado, of Palm Beach Gardens, president of a group she created called Trump Team 2020, sees primaries ahead.
“We absolutely will primarying every single one of those RINOs,” she said, using the acronym for Republican In Name Only, a phrase Trump and his supporters use to deride people they see as insufficiently loyal.
But Larry Casey, a Republican strategist from Palm Beach Gardens who has managed congressional campaigns and run congressional offices, predicted unity won’t take more than a few months.
Though feelings are raw among Trump’s most avid supporters, Casey said, they’ll come together — in reaction to the Biden presidency. “This is all going to be forgotten and all put behind us.”
Not universal
Trump doesn’t have a lock on all Republicans.
Margi Helschien, past vice chairwoman of the Palm Beach County Republican party and past president of the Boca Raton Republican Club, voted for Trump in 2016.
This year, she publicly supported Biden.
She said she would “absolutely” watch the inauguration. “I watched [Barack] Obama’s inauguration, and I wasn’t at the time happy. But this is the president of the United States of America,” she said. “People who are saying I’m boycotting this and I’m boycotting that, they’re hurting themselves. This is our country, and it’s not about red, it’s not about blue, it’s about red, white and blue.”
In normal times, Helschien said, the country would already be uniting for a fresh start, ready to move forward. “Typically, when you have an election in November, by January it has simmered down. You may not be happy, but you move on. This closure has not happened for [Trump supporters].”
Rightful winner
Far from closure, South Florida’s most outspoken Trump activists say they believe the claims he and some of his prominent supporters have made that Biden didn’t win the election, and it was somehow stolen.
There isn’t evidence the election was stolen. Republican elections officials have said there was no widespread fraud. Federal judges appointed by Trump issued multiple opinions finding there was no basis to the claims of irregularities. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who eagerly championed everything Trump wanted in the last four years, said Biden was the clear, legitimate winner.
Rojas and Goldfarb believe Trump, not them.
“Everybody would be OK” if there had been “an honest election,” Rojas said. “Most of the people I talk to don’t believe the election was fair.”
Goldfarb said, “They stole the election. It’s horrible what they did to the president.”
And Barnett, the Palm Beach County Republican chairman, said: “We believe, despite what a lot of people say, that the election was indeed stolen. We believe he was given a raw deal and support him 100%.”
Helschien said Trump has repeated the claim so many times that his supporters have come to believe it. “Nobody has found even one ounce of evidence that anyone was cheating. The problem is [Trump] keeps repeating his stuff over and over again to his followers,” she said. “It’s kind of like the Kool-Aid. They keep drinking it.”