‘Florida loves Trump’: hundreds await former president at pre-election rally in Miami
Donald Trump is not on the ballot, but two days ahead of the general election, hundreds showed up for the former president’s “Save America” rally Sunday at the Miami-Dade County fairgrounds.
In the hours leading up the Trump’s scheduled 5 p.m. appearance in support of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, the event resembled a snapshot from 2020, with dozens of red Make America Great Again caps dotting the crowd. Some attendees wore American and Cuban flags tied like a cape. A long line snaked around the fairgrounds entrance, where “Who Let the Dogs Out” and “In the Air Tonight” played through speakers. Roger Stone, the convicted political operative pardoned during Trump’s final days in office, entered through a “special guest” check-in tent.
READ MORE: ‘Things change’: Rubio, once Trump’s adversary, embraces former president
Jason Crothers, standing in line for a hot dog stand, had driven nearly three hours from Cape Coral to see Trump in-person for the first time since Jan. 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol.
“I would expect this to be packed,” he said of Sunday’s event. “Florida loves Trump.”
Crothers wore a hat with the letter Q on it, synonymous with QAnon, the conspiracy that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
“The Q movement is just taking the government back as we the people,” he said. “The government has gotten inflated and just out of control. They don’t have any repercussions, and I believe Trump and the military kind of started to wake the people up.”
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Crothers said he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and plans to do so again in 2024 should Trump run again.
“That’s my guy,” he said of the former president. “If they rally everybody against one guy, something’s up.”
Eighteen-year-old James Berry was excited to potentially cast his vote for a president for the first time in 2024, with reports swirling that Trump will announce a third consecutive run for president this month. He said he is “absolutely, 100%” planning to vote for Trump.
In July, Berry moved from the Hudson Valley in New York to Boynton Beach.
“Life is just better down here,” he said of Florida. “It’s a whole new country down here. Down here you have freedom with everything. Freedom of speech, freedom to carry, freedom to basically do what you want.”
Berry said Trump is equipped to solve the two most important issues to him: crime and inflation.
Sunday wasn’t Berry’s first time at a Trump rally. He attended one in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2020 election.
“It was probably the best experience I could have asked for,” he said.
Elsewhere in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump protégé now viewed as a possible threat to the former president’s grip on the Republican Party, held his own campaign events.
READ MORE: With disparaging nickname for DeSantis, Trump elevates rivalry before election
But at the fairgrounds, attendees huddled under tents and behind food carts as an early-afternoon rainstorm passed over. Others got soaked while waiting in line.
Yumary Boganwright, 58, wasn’t going to let the weather deter her.
“We have been since 9 o’clock outside waiting to get in in the heat, in Miami humidity, just to see him,” Boganwright said.
The Miami-Dade resident came to support Trump, whom she called “amazing.”
“He knows what the people want, he totally gets us, he’s always behind us 100% and so we’re behind him 100%,” Boganwright said. “We want Marco Rubio, we want DeSantis, we want republicans up and down the ballot.”
She said she anticipates DeSantis winning the gubernatorial election, and then running for president in 2028. “I get goosebumps,” she said at the thought of that possibility.
