The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: miami
Donald Trump

Trump Says Followers 'Must Come Out' To Protest Indictment -- While Some Threaten 'War'

More than 24 hours before he was scheduled to be arraigned, Donald Trump’s supporters started to show up at the federal courthouse in Miami, where the ex-president will be formally advised of the 37 felony criminal charges against him Tuesday at 3 PM.

Trump wants a big showing – “See you in Miami on Tuesday!!!” – he posted to his Truth Social account last week, in all-caps.

“This is the final battle,” Trump told supporters Saturday, Axios reports, and warned, “our people are angry.”

VICEon Monday reported Trump’s supporters “are planning mass protests at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday, following Trump’s indictment last week. Many are promising to come ‘well-armed.'”

It quoted some Trump supporters, including one who said, “MAGA will make Waco look like a tea party.”

“I used to laugh when my mom said that she was afraid if she registered Republican she may be arrested one day. I’m not laughing any more. Just buying more ammo,” VICE says another wrote.

Yet another over the weekend posted a photo of Attorney General Merrick Garland, and wrote: “America cannot allow this cowardly thug to destroy our democracy. This is what the Second Amendment was made for. Buy a gun or help organize your local militia today.”

On the highly-trafficked forum known as The Donald, many posts “directly referenced Trump’s own posts on his social media platform Truth Social. Under one screenshot of a Trump post about his aide Walt Nauta also being indicted, one user wrote: ‘Revolution Now.’ Another added: ‘I want blood. I want fucking blood.'”

Trump, VICE notes, “has done nothing to tamp down any potential threats, repeatedly calling for his own supporters to turn up en masse in Miami on Tuesday, just as he did ahead of the January 6 Capitol riot,” and he “shared a meme about his indictment with a caption declaring, ‘THIS IS NOT A GAME, THIS IS WAR.'”

Pushing for a big showing, Trump spoke Sunday on the radio show of his longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone, whose sentence he commuted.

Our country has to protest,” Trump said, as Rolling Stone reported. “We’ve lost everything.”

Real Clear Politics adds that Trump told Roger Stone, “Our country is being taken away from us. Our country is going communist, it’s going Marxist, it’s going really bad, and the people of our country aren’t that way. But the people running it are. And we need strength at this point and everyone’s afraid to do anything. They’re afraid to talk, and they have to go out and they have to protest peacefully. They have to go.”

Reuters posted this live video feed Monday afternoon. Not a big showing.

Last week author Jeff Sharlet, who writes about extremism and the religious right, said he was “skeptical” that they would show, after all the January 6 arrests.

Sharlet says Trump’s remarks, like “Saturday’s claim that World War III ‘WILL’ occur if he’s not back, & that he is the ‘only one’ who can stop the obliteration of the world, are claims to divinity.”

Last Friday, The Guardian reported there are 12 million Americans who “believe violence is justified to restore Trump to power.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Eric Trump and Charlie Ward

Eric Trump: I Won't Appear With Hitler-Promoting Antisemites (This Week)

Two Hitler-promoting antisemites were dropped from a speaking engagement at former President Donald Trump's Miami hotel alongside key members of the ex-president’s orbit, including his son Eric Trump. The cancellations came only after Team Trump was heavily criticized for associating with the antisemites and after Eric Trump already spoke alongside them at numerous other stops.

Trump ally Alan Dershowitz relayed a message from Eric Trump on his Rumble podcast yesterday, stating: “This is from Eric Trump: I asked the event organizer that the speaker be uninvited and they -- because there's more than one -- won't be allowed on our property. Don't know the person or anything about them. … They will no longer be here.” The tour’s website no longer lists them as speakers at Trump's Miami hotel. (The speakers in question, Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, are still listed as overall tour “featured" speakers.)

The ReAwaken America tour, which has been going around the country, is making its latest stop at Trump National Doral in Miami on Friday and Saturday. McKay and Ward, who both host shows on Rumble, were scheduled to speak alongside numerous members of Trump’s orbit, including Eric and Lara Trump; Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes; former senior Department of Defense official Kash Patel; and former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker.

McKay has said that “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today.” He’s also claimed Jewish people orchestrated 9/11 and presidential assassinations; and said Jewish people torture and eat children.

Ward has shared posts praising Hitler for supposedly “warning us” about Judaism; claiming that “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made”; and attacking the alleged Jewish media for supposedly lying about the Holocaust.

Eric Trump and the two Hitler-promoting antisemites have spoken at prior stops together, including at Nashville in January; Branson in November; Batavia/Rochester in August; and Virginia Beach in July. McKay wrote last year that Eric Trump “says his Dad loves what we’re doing.” The two have had their picture taken with Eric Trump.

Tour co-founder Clay Clark recently celebrated that McKay has gained access to Team Trump, telling him: “You've stuck to your guns. ... Now you're seeing folks like Eric Trump and Kash Patel and Gen. Flynn on the same stage with yourself." (Clark is a frequent guest on the programs of McKay and Ward.)

McKay and Ward were invited to speak at the Trump Doral event until Eric Trump’s association with them became a liability.

Media Matters reported on Eric Trump’s connections to the two, including their scheduled Trump Doral appearances, in February. That reporting was re-upped on May 8 with additional information. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow then dedicated part of her May 8 show to covering the event.

Eric Trump initially responded not by publicly denouncing the two antisemites but by threatening to “take legal action against” Maddow for her accurate reporting. He followed that by suggesting that reporting on the event was timed to distract from Hunter Biden news and hiding behind “my Orthodox Jewish brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, who Lara and I chose to marry us on our wedding day.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper reported yesterday on the event and said that Eric Trump stated that organizers told him that McKay and Ward would be dropped.

Media Matters has documented over 100 instances of Republican politicians embracing antisemitic media figures since 2021.

While McKay and Ward are no longer part of the Trump Doral event, the tour is still scheduled to feature numerous far-right conspiracy theorists, including fellow QAnon supporters Mel K, Ann Vandersteel, Gene Ho, John Michael Chambers, and Liz Crokin; January 6 insurrectionist Simone Gold; Stella Immanuel, a COVID-19 conspiracy theorist who “believes in Alien DNA, demon Sperm, and hydroxychloroquine”; and Julie Green, who has claimed that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “loves to drink the little children’s blood.”

And while it’s still early, a poster for the tour’s Las Vegas stop in August features McKay, Ward, and Eric Trump, along with Alex Jones.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Ron DeSantis

Before DeSantis Became Obsessed With Drag, Miami Was Fun

Let's be grateful that Ron DeSantis devotes so much of his time raging over drag queens and bragging how he punished Disney for disagreeing with him. An obsessive pursuit of "woke" has kept the Florida governor and apparent presidential candidate from mucking around serious matters. But, sadly, not always.

DeSantis shocked many foreign policy experts, including some in his Republican Party, after characterizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a mere territorial dispute between two countries and of not much import to America. Cozying up to Tucker Carlson, DeSantis obediently mimicked the Fox News celebrity's on-air opinion, whether the governor and/or Carlson believed it and/or not.

When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, then-Rep. DeSantis offered a very different view. "We in the Congress have been urging the president, I've been, to provide arms to Ukraine," he said back then. "They want to fight their good fight."

For DeSantis, spending grown-up time on a threat to the Western alliance might seem an unwanted distraction from his main theme of waging a comic-book war against "woke." For example, his administration has just revoked the Hyatt Regency Miami's alcohol license because it hosted "A Drag Queen Christmas."

The theatrical displeasure centered on the presence of young people in the audience. That the minors had to be accompanied by an adult did not apparently matter to the ministers of Miami morality. To DeSantis, the parental right to make such judgements is a sometimes thing, rhetoric to the contrary.

How fortunate that Some Like It Hot was made in 1959 and not 2023. It has Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dressed in drag to hide from the mob as they scamper through the "Seminole Ritz Hotel" in Miami. Their exaggerated portrayals of women are hilarious to those with an intact sense of humor.

In one scene, Osgood Fielding III, a besotted rich yachtsman played by Joe E. Brown, proposes marriage to Lemmon dressed as "Daphne." An exasperated Lemmon pulls off his wig and declares, "I'm a man!" to which Brown replies, "Well, nobody's perfect."

One can't imagine such gender-bending horseplay getting by the censors in a DeSantis-ized Miami.

Did the movie include performers "wearing sexually suggesting clothing" as specified in the charges against the Hyatt's drag queen show? It did, but the performer was Marilyn Monroe singing I Wanna Be Loved By You in an almost-dress, her gender identification unmistakable.

If Shakespeare's works are not to the Florida governor's taste, just as well. Some of the bard's female characters disguised themselves as men. And back in Elizabethan days, male actors took on female roles because women were not allowed on the stage. The term "in drag" originally referred to male actors wearing long skirts that dragged on the stage floor.

DeSantis might want to address the Bugs Bunny problem. On over 40 occasions, the "wacky wabbit" cavorts in female dress, most memorably as the Brazilian samba queen, Carmen Miranda.

We also had Donald Duck playing a "femme fatale" in The Three Caballeros, a cartoon that sailed by the censors in 1944. Donald Duck is a product of the evil Disney studios, so going after him might seem a win-win in the DeSantis mindset.

The big risk for DeSantis is making his opponent Donald Trump seem deep by comparison. Trump was in Iowa talking about ethanol. He warned that DeSantis was against Social Security. "That's a bad one," Trump added, rubbing it in.

As bystanders in the political farce consuming much of the Republican race for president, we can give thanks that DeSantis has decided to battle against the sinister forces of wokeness and leave the important issues pretty much alone.

But too bad about Miami. It used to be fun.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Proud Boys Taking Control Of Miami GOP

Neo-Fascist Proud Boys Taking Control Of Miami GOP

Something stinks in Miami and the stench, it would appear, is wafting in from members of the neofascist group known as the Proud Boys.

A report byThe New York Timespublished Thursday dives into the rapidly expanding political landscape in Dade County where the Miami-Dade Republican Party has now accepted a number of people affiliated with the extremist group into the ranks of its executive committee.

Miami, since at least the early 1990s, has been a Democratic stronghold for presidential candidates. The 2020 election put that to the test and the hits have just kept coming. The Republican Party continues its lurch toward extreme right-wing ideology and divisions continue to be inflamed by the party’s darlings like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the twice-impeached former president-turned-Florida-resident Donald Trump.

According to the chair of the GOP’s executive committee in Miami, Rene Garcia, they are aware of the “fringe elements” present in the influential panel. But having a few Proud Boys on board—including those charged with obstructing Congress or impeding police on Jan. 6, 2021—is, apparently, just par for the course.

“Yes, we have different points of view in our party. That’s how we are. And my job as Republican chairman is to protect everyone’s First Amendment right, however wrong they may be,” Garcia told the Times.

In February, the Miami Herald reported at length on the spread of extremist right-wing ideologues into Florida life and politics. In fact, in terms of January 6 defendants, the outlet noted, no other state claimed more than the Sunshine State. Granted, there are 21 million people who live in Florida, therefore increasing the probability of their presence in the defendant pool.

But it's not just a numbers game.

A plethora of the nation’s most prominent right-wing figures call Florida home, including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. The onetime president of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, is also from Miami and the group has had significant success disseminating its message within and outside of the state’s borders.

The Southern Poverty Law Center remarked on this phenomenon to the Miami Herald.

Rachel Carroll Rivas, a senior research analyst for SPLC said in February:

“Those national players can speak to audiences around the country — they choose to be based in Florida, but they’re also influenced by the politics of Florida and influence Florida politics. And in that way, they actually export Florida culture across the country.”

There are also a large number of hate groups that call Florida home. In the last two decades, extremist groups of all types have expanded in the state from right around 40 groups in 2000 to 68 identified today.

The number of hate groups across America overall has shrunk recently, according to the SPLC’s most recent report, but the Proud Boys aren’t losing any momentum. In fact, analysis has shown an increase in the number of Proud Boys chapter divisions cropping up in the U.S.

As noted by the Times on Thursday, self-starter groups like Miami Against Fascism have invested their energy into sorting out who in the Miami-Dade Republican Party may have ties to the hate group.

Today, the Miami-Dade Republican Party executive committee members include January 6 defendants Gilbert Fonticoba and Gabriel Garcia, for example.

Fonticoba was charged with obstructing Congress on Jan. 6. He faces a a number of other charges and has pleaded not guilty. According to an order from the U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington, D.C., Fonticoba’s next appearance is slated for August. In advance of his trial, Fonticoba has asked for additional time to review the “voluminous discovery” presented to him by prosecutors.

Gabriel Garcia, who faces charges including entering a restricted area on January 6, violent entry, disorderly conduct and more, also sits on the Miami Republican Party Executive Committee.

According to the Times, Garcia has said that he is no longer a member of the Proud Boys. An attorney for Garcia could not immediately be reached by Daily Kos.

Prosecutors said that Garcia screamed at U.S. Capitol Police on January 6, calling them “fucking traitors” as he allegedly urged those around him to storm the Capitol.

“USA!” Garcia was heard chanting in a Facebook video he uploaded. “Storm this shit!”

In another video, Garcia is heard allegedly taunting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to “come out and play.”

Garcia has railed against claims that the Proud Boys are a hate group. When he ran for a House seat in Florida last year, the former U.S. Army Captain said those descriptions were false. He has pleaded not guilty.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Garcia deflected the accusations and blamed antifa for violence in the U.S.

Another member of the committee is Chris Barcenas. Though Barcenas did not go into the Capitol on January 6 and has not been charged with any crimes, he was at the Capitol that day and has been identified by groups like Miami Against Fascism as a member of the Proud Boys.

He has also not appeared to contest his membership with the group; he reporetedly testified earlier this year in private before the January 6 Committee to discuss Proud Boys and their role in January 6.

Another member of the GOP’s executive committee, Barbara Balmaseda, recently stepped down when pictures started to circulate of her on Capitol grounds on January 6. She said her resignation was based on her wish to focus on other work and that she felt the executive committee had become a drama-filled “waste of time.”

Balmaseda once interned for Florida Senator Marco Rubio and worked as a campaign organizer for Ron DeSantis. She was also a field organizer for the GOP in Florida and has managed campaigns for aspiring legislators like Omar Blanco and Illeana Garcia.

Though she recently left the executive committee, she has opted to remain on the board of the Miami Young Republicans.

Notably, online sleuths have claimed that they have identified Balmaseda at the rally on January 6 and in proximity to alleged January 6 conspirator and Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean.



An attorney for Balmaseda did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

Balmaseda’s boyfriend, Brandon Diaz, served until very recently as the executive director for the GOP in Miami. He allegedly left the position to focus on his day job.

He has denied having any role in bringing Proud Boys into the committee’s fold in Miami and has denied any personal involvement with the group.

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos.