Donald Trump probably doesn't give a damn if the nation's airports are crowded with Americans protesting his racist and incompetent travel orders, but this? This hits him where he lives.
Chanting “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Donald Trump has got to go,’’ 3,000 protesters marched down Flagler Drive on Saturday in a loud but mostly orderly display of discontent that shattered the usual calm of the city’s south end neighborhoods.
Several hundred protesters marched east over the Southern Boulevard bridge just after 7 p.m. and made it to within 25 yards of Mar-a-Lago, where Trump was attending a Red Cross charity ball.
While Donald Trump was enjoying a Trump-business-hosted Red Cross charity event featuring Donald Trump's staff dressed up "in powdered wigs and satin knee breeches or Marie Antoinette dresses"—because nothing screams either economic populism or benefiting the needy like dressing up like pre-revolution French nobility—his guests threaded in past protesters and lines of police dressed in riot gear. It must have really heightened the Les Misérables vibe inside the club gates, don't you think?
The event was described as peaceful and friendly, though some of Trump's neighbors were not pleased by the attention.
Some property owners hired private security guards to keep marchers off their property. And in response to concerns by residents, the city installed four portable toilets along the Flagler Drive route — two at Petty Park and two more at the east end of Monroe Drive.
“This is horrible,” said one homeowner near Greenwood Drive who would not give his name. “They should know and respect that this is a quiet residential neighborhood. We are frightened.”
I can see how that'd be upsetting. It's no "Help me, I am a Syrian refugee fleeing one of the world's most brutal war zones and have already lost multiple family members to horrific violence" upsetting, but it's probably right up there.
Don't worry. It's almost certain that more Americans will be coming by to express their points of view the next time Donald Trump stops by Mar-a-Lago as well. And the time after that, and the time after that—so his neighbors will have plenty of time to get used to this.