Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Local supporters greet president
Trump fans lined up along the street to welcome him home to his Mar-a-Lago estate on Thursday.
Just off I-95 on Southern Boulevard, The Resistance was still very much in effect. A small group of people, no more than a dozen, held aloft big banners that read “Corrupt” and “Resign.”
But farther east down Southern, closer to Mar-a-Lago, the anti-Trump sentiment melted away like low tide across the street from President Donald Trump’s palatial home.
The president was returning to his estate, and his supporters were lined up along the street to welcome him home and celebrate the issuing of the Mueller Report, which failed to bring any charges against the president, finding no evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign to fix the 2016 presidential election. Mueller also neither charged Trump with obstruction nor exonerated him. The “investigation found multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” according to the report.
Still, a win was a win, and Trump’s supporters, lining the street in pockets from Flannigan’s on Southern and Washington to the Intracoastal, were in a celebratory mood.
The crowd was thickest in the parking lot of the St. Catherine Greek Orthodox Church, just across the Intracoastal from Mar-a-Lago. A crowd that stood at about 30 at 6 p.m. doubled in half an hour and had grown to 80 by the time the police motorcycles began driving past, heralding the arrival of the man of the hour.
These in-person Trump supporters displayed a characteristic unseen in the trolling flame wars of social media: Earnestness. As Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” came on over speakers in the church parking lot, many in the crowd sang along. One woman wiped a tear from her eyes.
But there was also talk of Sharia law and whole cities taken over by Muslims in the north and illegal immigrants in the south.
“We have people like that Ilhan Omar in our government,” said Paula Magnuson, speaking of the freshman Muslim Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, who has drawn controversy over her comments on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and large-money Jewish Democratic donors. “She shouldn’t be allowed to wear that hijab. It’s against the House rules. She said it’s about power and liberation and resistance. She didn’t mention that cult she’s in, because I can’t call it a religion.”
There are about 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, almost a quarter of the world’s population. But they account for less than 2% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center.
Magnuson smiled readily, often with exasperation over Omar, other Democrats, illegal immigrants. She carried her little dog, Shania, and a “Dogs for Trump” sign, and the sequins that spelled out “Trump Girl” on her red choker glittered in the setting sun.
Her “Dogs for Trump” sign was hardly alone. Others included “Guatemalans for Trump;” “Investigate the Investigators;” and “How do you spell moron? C-O-R-TE-Z,” a reference to freshman Democratic congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York, another conservative bugaboo.
Magnuson had to think a moment when asked how many times she had stood on the side of the road, sign in hand, to welcome Trump back to Mar-a-Lago.
“He’s come back here 26 times, I think. So, 26 times,” she said, shifting her weight as she juggled her sign and her Shania.
Earlier in the day, Trump had tweeted out an image that featured him turning away from the camera with “Game Over” written across his figure in a font reminiscent of the title font of the popular HBO TV series “Game of Thrones.”
But Magnuson and others in the crowd realize that the end of the Mueller investigation is not the final end.
“Being that he was an outsider, he’s shaking things up, the globalists and the elitists. He’s pushing out the swamp monsters,” she said.
Jim Roth, who came with friends and family that all held up heart signs, including “We (heart) Trump,” “We (heart) Melania,” “We (heart) military,” and more, agreed.
“My prediction is at the minimum the Democrats will spend the next two weeks and possibly the rest of the year picking the meat from the bones like a bunch of vultures,” he said.
Others in his party could see an advantage to the Democrats insisting on endless investigations.
“When chaos stirs, we win,” said Christy Moore, as she lowered her “We (heart) Our President” sign. “Game Over — Trump 2020, on!”
It was over quickly. The black SUVs rolled by, Trump waved through the darktinted glass, and the crowd walked away as Mick Jagger wailed on the speakers, singing the tune that blasted over the speakers at Trump rally after Trump rally during the president’s 2016 rise to power: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.”