Trump returning to Florida ‘very soon’
President Donald Trump — who didn’t make it to the Palm Beach County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner at Mar-a-Lago in March — made a splash at the Hillsborough County GOP’s Lincoln Day dinner Saturday night in Tampa.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that the president phoned his friend Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi during the event. Bondi, at the podium, held her phone to the microphone so the audience could hear Trump say: “I’ll be there fairly soon. We’ll hold a special event there in the near future . ... We’ll be in Tampa very soon.”
A big question: Will Trump appear with U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis? Trump tweeted in December that DeSantis “would make a GREAT Governor of Florida” but otherwise hasn’t weighed in on the gubernatorial primary between DeSantis and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.
Trump hasn’t been to Tampa as president since a February 2017 visit to the U.S. Central Command post there.
Trump has made 17 trips to Palm Beach as president, covering at least a portion of 71 days. He’s also made several appearances elsewhere in Florida as president. Most of those coincided with trips to Mar-a-Lago, but two did not: a trip to Miami last June to announce a change in Cuba policy and to Southwest Florida after Hurricane Irma last September.
Trump’s non-Palm Beach County visits to Florida have included:
■ Tampa: A Feb. 6, 2017, visit, along with Florida Gov. Rick Scott, to the headquarters of U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base;
■ Melbourne: A Feb. 18, 2017, campaign rally in Melbourne during which Trump summoned Boynton Beach resident and Trump superfan Gene Huber to the stage;
■ Orlando: A March 3, 2017, visit with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio to St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando to promote school choice programs;
■ Miami: A June 16, 2017, visit to Little Havana to sign trade and travel restrictions on communist Cuba. Also in attendance were Vice President Mike Pence, Rubio and Scott; Trump publicly urged Scott to run for Senate in 2018;
■ Fort Myers and Naples: A Sept. 14, 2017, visit after Hurricane Irma to inspect recovery efforts, in which Trump, accompanied by Pence and first lady Melania Trump, made another public appeal to Scott to run for Senate;
■ Pensacola: A Dec. 8, 2017, rally in which Trump promoted the campaign of accused child molester Roy Moore in a special U.S. Senate election in Alabama. DeSantis flew from Washington to Pensacola with the president and gave an impassioned introductory speech at the rally. Two weeks later, Trump made his “GREAT Governor” tweet about DeSantis;
■ Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale: A Feb. 16 visit with Melania Trump — two days after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — with recovering victims at Broward Health North Hospital and then with first responders at the Broward Sheriff ’s Office headquarters in Fort Lauderdale;
■ Hialeah: An April 16 roundtable discussion on tax cuts at the city’s Bucky Dent Gymnasium;
■ Key West: An April 19 trip to Naval Station Key West to visit the Joint Interagency Task Force-South with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and others.