Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home city of Minneapolis is trying to shake down President Trump over security costs in order to prevent him from holding a rally there.
President Trump went completely off the rails after he was told he would have to pay the city upwards of $530,000 for security for his rally at the Target Center, a number that is more than 25 times what Obama paid for his rally in 2009.
Overcharging Trump
The animosity between President Trump and Minneapolis is there for obvious reasons.
However, in addition to the Omar link, the mayor of the city has it out for Trump as well.
Mayor Frey once stated in an interview that Trump’s “message of hatred will never be welcome in Minneapolis.”
While Frey cannot outright ban Trump from speaking, he can use his powers to make it as difficult as possible for him to do so.
In this case, he is clearly jacking up security costs to dissuade the campaign from holding an event, one that would eat a significant amount of the security budget up for the campaign season.
The allegations being made against Frey are not without merit, either.
Last year, costs for a rally in Rochester were $76,138 (the Trump campaign ponied up $26,215 of those costs).
In 2009, President Obama held a rally at the Target Center, but the costs were estimated to be about $20,000.
Using an inflation calculator, that would amount to almost $24,000 today, a far cry from the more than half-million Frey is asking Trump to pay.
Trump, of course, was more than happy to express his opinion about the matter on Twitter, calling Frey a “lightweight mayor.”
The lightweight mayor is hurting the great police and other wonderful supporters. 72,000 ticket requests already. Dump Frey and Omar! Make America Great Again! https://t.co/ibTqvSbsbn
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2019
The Trump campaign has also gone into attack mode against Frey.
Campaign manager Brad Parscale said Frey was demonstrating “an outrageous abuse of power” as well as “trying to deny the rights of his own city’s residents just because he hates the president.”
Trump’s attorneys also issued a statement:
“We are well aware of Mayor Frey’s vocal partisan opposition to President Trump and calls to disrupt the rally.
“This last-minute squeeze seems to be nothing but a pretextual political effort with serious First Amendment ramifications.”
This is akin to living in a police state right now, as Dems are going to extreme measures to prevent Americans from hearing from their president.
At this point, China has more freedom of speech than conservatives in this county.
Source: Fox News
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