PARTISANPARADE LOVEDANDFEARED
Someworry Trump Train is damaging Newbraunfels
NEW BRAUNFELS — The scene at the Rockin’ R tube rental parking lot across theguadalupe River from the Gruene historic district had the feel of a tailgate party before a big game Thursday evening — a festive, flag-waving atmosphere.
The similarities stopped with the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem. This was no sporting event. This was politics, conveyed by banners bearing President Donald Trump’s name and image, a prayer over the public address system and a fiery speech that sketched the stakes of the upcoming election in stark terms.
The man giving the speech was organizer Steve Ceh, who later estimated that around 1,000 people had shown up. They milled around booths where caps and other itemswere for sale, a generally middle-aged to older crowd, mostly white. Very few wore masks. Officers in two police cruisers watched the event.
And then the New Braunfels Trump Train headed out, a wheeled display of partisan enthusiasm that again had assembled hundreds of vehicles, most of them pickups. Now in its third month, the weekly parade is beloved by most people in this Republican-dominated city andwelcomed on its occasional forays out of town, participants say.
But other New Braunfelsers have become irritated by the noise, traffic holdups and the parade’s ugly edge— the racist taunting of Black and Hispanic residents encountered along theway. And the resulting fear, anger and pushback has some worried that America’s bitter political divide is damaging the town’s self-image as a friendly, prosperous destination for those seeking the
good life.
Reports of Trumptrain behavior early this month moved Mayor Rusty Brockman to issue a statement saying the hurt being inflicted or perceived was “not the New Braunfels that I know and love.”
One man was accused of harassing local African Americans by posting their photos on social media and suggesting that the rally’s participants arm themselves in case of a confrontation. The approval that greeted another motorist who dragged Black Lives Matter and antifa flags on the street from his pickup and laughingly took credit for it in a Facebook post also drew outrage.
“It was like a dragging an African American. They wanted to drag anafrican American behind those of Black Lives Matter, they want to drive them, drag them behind a pickup truck,” saidhenry Ford, vice president of the New Braunfels MLK Association.
The abuse of the flag and the hatred on display “really scared a lot of us African Americans here in town to wondering if we actually were welcome,” said Dr. Jessica Edwards, a family physician in New Braunfels. “Are our lives in danger due to these events?”
The driver of the truck, Nils Ruona of San Antonio, said he regretted dragging the Black Lives Matter flag — he considers the movement Marxist, but “it was not a good message to put out there, I suppose” — especially because the resulting brickbats on social media included a screen grab from a post he wrote three years ago that said, “I’m not apart of the kkk… just hate black people.”
Ruona, 31, said he was not a racist but failed to think before he acted.
New Braunfels Police Chief Tom Wibert acknowledged that the bad civic chemistry from the parade could lead to violence — “that’s always a concern,” he said — but a recent meeting with organizers was more focused on traffic safety and noise. The atmosphere of racism being stoked by a few people is “not at all what the organizers said they intended,” Wibert said.
“I’ve not seen anything comparable to this in New Braunfels in the10 years I’ve been chief,” he added. “If someone uses the Nword, we don’t condone racism, but we have to stick to what we can enforce. If it were combined with a threat, we could definitely take action. ‘Assault by threat’ most likely. But stupidity is not against the law.”
New Braunfels City Councilman Matthew Hoyt said more
than 40 residents had contacted him after a previous parade, some likely staunch Trump conservatives who have soured on the Trump Train because of the bad behavior.
“They’re turned off by this because, again, one of the words that some of them are using is they’re being ‘terrorized’ by this. They can’t get out of their driveway,” Hoyt said. “God, I don’t even like using the term ‘N-word.’ Other terms, ‘Go back on the boat’ or ‘Take a boat back from where you came from’ or something to that effect — these kinds of things are not welcome in this district.”
Terri Truitt, a local attorney, said her client, Andrae Blissett, was one off our african american men targeted in a social media post that contained their photos and advised those joining an upcoming Trump Train rally to “be strapped” in case of trouble.
Truitt said she filed reports with the FBI and New Braunfels police. Police confirmed the report was made but were unable to provide a copy this week.
Organizer Ceh, a leader of Trump Train NB, the group putting on the rally, met with the mayor, the city manager, Wibert and police command staff this month to discuss reports that Trump Train participants had blocked intersections, stood in the beds of their pickups and didn’t wear seat belts.
“We also asked them to work with us on their routes,” Wibert said. “They’ve been going through residential areas, and some are blowing actual train horns they have on their trucks. It’s against the law for actual trains to use train horns in New Braunfels.”
The chief said that Ceh gave assurances that “the negative element, displaying racism, had
nothing to do with them and they would be self-policing their rally.”
Ceh’s wife, Randi, said participants had been asked to avoid disturbing residents but that she wasn’t aware of anyone using racial insults and didn’t think there was evidence for it.
The group did put out a statement warning, “Anyone that joins this organization with the purpose of spreading a message of hate is notwelcome and will be identified and advertised as an… impostor that is attempting to stain this organization as something it is not.”
Participants get a route map and a rules sheet, and “my husband gets up and pumps everybody up, you know, for our country, not be crazy but, you know, gives quotes fromfounders, from our founding fathers or like a little message of hope,” Ceh said.
Before the caravans headed out Thursday — this time riders were given a choice of four routes — Steve Ceh made a point of admonishing those in the crowd to mind their manners. At one point in his speech, he predicted the motorists would encounter antiTrump protesters and referred to them as “evil.”
“We get a lot of threats, we drive around townand get a lot of middle fingers, we have a lot of people running us off the road, some have come head on at us,” Ceh said in a brief interview. “They cuss at us, they call us racists, so it’s a very evil element that comes at us.”
The Trump Train first met at a strip center with about 10 cars, Randi Ceh said. Wibert likened the group in its early stages to “the jeep club going out for coffee.” “Then it started doubling every week,” he said.
Until the night a fewweeks ago that the honking cars drew a much-publicized rebuke from a sleeping infant’s mother, “it was a 100 percent patriotic, energetic event,” Comal County Republican Party chair Sue Piner said. (The baby’s father told a local online news outlet that someone in the caravan called his wife a communist and someone else threatened to burn the house down.)
As for dragging a Black Lives Matter flag, Piner said it was “sad to see something that is controversial was brought into this.”
“The whole movement of the Trump Train is patriotism for America,” she said. “It’s not against black or white, gray or green, it’s not against race or culture or creed, it’s not against any of that because America’s the melting pot and we’re for everybody. Equal. Equal opportunity for all.”
Republicans hold every elective office in Comal County, where Trump took 72.6 percent of the vote in 2016. Piner said the GOP registered 26 newvoters at a recent Trump Train rally and will continue that effort.
The obnoxiousness oftrump’s most fervent local supporters has “driven people away from the Republican Party,” said Gloria Meehan, the Comal County Democratic Party chair.
A steady stream of visitors have been picking up Joe Biden yard signs at the party’s New Braunfels headquarters, and they are routinely heckled by Trump supporterswho blaremusic from their vehicles and shout insults, Meehan said.
“We can call the police, andwe have when they’re yelling obscenities at people coming into our offices, but there’s nothing we can really do about it. That’s the First Amendment,” Meehan said. “But folks in our office are highly concerned and afraid of them. None of them have actually done anything yet. They just roll up with their flags flying.”
Amy Parks, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan in 2010 as a combat medic, had enough familiarity with local pro-trump activists to dread the Trump Train’s scheduled arrival on a recent Saturday in her subdivision northwest ofnewbraunfels.
“I’ve been at Black Lives Matter protests in Newbraunfels and watched how they came armed across the street from us,” said Parks, who is white and has biracial children. “They want to portray that they’re peaceful, but they’re not.”