Lifestyle

Retirement Community Residents Drag MAGA Supporters

by Julie Scagell
Seniors protest Trump supporters
@davenewworld_2/Twitter

The Villages in Florida is a predominantly Republican community

Video shared on Twitter shows scenes from the Villages, a large and mostly all-white retirement community in Florida, where a golf cart parade full of Trump supporters were met with some fiery protestors who wanted them to know Trump’s agenda and everything he stands for was very much not welcome there.

In the video, people with Trump shirts, signs, and decorated golf carts can be seen driving past protesters — both sides hurling insults at each other. In one exchange, a white man holding a sign that reads “Make America Sane Again” yells, “Where’s your white hood?” In response, a white man driving a golf cart with signs reading “Trump 2020” and “America First” yells back “white power!”

Trump retweeted the video on Twitter Sunday, writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe [Biden] is shot. See you soon!!!” His retweet came before 8 a.m. ET this morning and was deleted around 11 a.m. Yes, in the middle of country-wide protests about systemic racism, police brutality against Black people and calls for confederate statues and flags to be removed, the president retweeted a video that said “white power.”

Twitter/Donald Trump

In a more recent poll, from the New York Times and Siena College, 61 percent of voters said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of race, while just 33 percent said they approved.

People were very much here for everything the protestors stand for:

The Twitter user who posted the footage Saturday, @davenewworld_2, told the Miami Herald the video was taken during a June 14 event at Lake Sumter Landing Market Square, the day of Trump’s birthday.

“There was always a divide, but we coexisted,” Chris Stanley, president of the Villages Democratic Club, told the Washington Post back in February. “There would be some good-natured back and forth, but your neighbors were your friends. You’d have dinner with the Republicans because it wasn’t a big deal. … These days, the division in the country shows up best in the Villages because now the Republicans, they won’t golf with you anymore, or you don’t want to golf with them.”

The Villages, a 120,000-person community, is considered a Trump stronghold in a county the president carried by nearly 70 percent in the 2016 election. “These people down here are emboldened because there’s so many of them,” said Ed McGinty, a Village resident and outspoken anti-Trump protestor. “And they really try to intimidate any Democrat that even sticks his head above water.”

Time will tell how Florida votes in November, but it’s refreshing to see more and more people stand up for what they believe in.