President Donald Trump started his day at his West Palm Beach-area golf club. Will he also cast a vote?
Reporters traveling with the president said the motorcade arrived at Trump International Golf Club at 9 a.m. Trump is expect to depart later on Oct. 24 to speak at a rally in Perry, Georgia, as the midterm campaigning lurches into its final week.
This trip marks one of his shortest weekend visits to Palm Beach over his two nonconsecutive terms. He arrived Friday, Oct. 23, after teasing about a celebration with a Fox News ally and intimating during a rally in Fort Myers that the long-anticipated action in Cuba has been delayed by the stalemated Iran war.
Departing from Southwest Florida, the president told reporters traveling with him that “he’s
on his way to celebrate atMar-a-Lago with Sean Hannity and Ainsley,” a reference to Ainsley Earhardt, the "Fox & Friends" personality with whom the network on-air commentator is in a relationship.
Trump did not elaborate other than to call it a “big, beautiful thing.” Hannity has a townhome in Palm Beach and is not a stranger to the Winter White House. Media reports indicated it was a rehearsal dinner for the couple's upcoming wedding.
In Fort Myers, Trump lauded the state’s midterm GOP candidates, dropped a profanity and renewed bravado about an action in Cuba, a topic that dropped off the radar screen as the war in Iran deepened into a prolonged and seemingly intractable conflict now completing its eighth month.
Trump hosted a delegation of Florida elected officials and administration representatives at the event. They included U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, who tops the state's midterm ballot.
Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles, who the president has insisted is not a candidate for replacement, was in attendance. So were gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, U.S. Rep. Brian Mast and state Attorney General James Uthmeier.
"I've never seen a midterm with this kind of action," Trump said bullishly. "Let's go out and do what we do best, which is to win."
The president's appearance was in a region of the state that is a politically reliable shade of MAGA red.
Across Florida, Republicans in key U.S. races find themselves in dogfights after three elections in which the Florida delegation in the House grew to a supermajority 20-to-8 count. Even Donalds is in a tight contest, according to election-watchers and a recent in-state poll by the University of North Florida.
The president boasted the U.S. military would take care of Cuba "on our way back from Iran," a boast disregarding the drain that the Middle East war has had on American forces.
"When we come back from Iran, those beautiful ships will pass Cuba,” he said, echoing similar comments during a speech in West Palm Beach on May 1. “Then we send Marco Rubio into finish."
Then he said of the secretary of state and former Florida U.S. senator: "We don't even have to stop. We can just put him in there and he'll figure it out. He's a great guy."
The statement that addressing the economic, political and diplomatic crisis in Cuba would follow resolution in Iran appeared to confirm what foreign affairs analysts have speculated — that what seemed like an imminent change in the Caribbean island nation was stalled by Tehran’s ability to stagnate the conflict.
The comments on Cuba nonetheless received a standing ovation. Southwest Florida has seen a migration of Cuban exiles and immigrants over the past decade or so.
Beyond that, the rally speech was Trump's brand of acidic politics, meandering musings, trolling and skits.
He defended his recently ousted White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, and claimed not to "give a s***" about the lawsuits he has faced over expensive, opulent and, in the case of the Reflecting Pool, shoddy work in his Washington, D.C., renovation and expansion construction projects.
Trump also continued a relatively new topic at rallies, talking about male physiques and how men look, this time commenting on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who also was at the rally.
This is the president's 29th visit to the Palm Beaches this term. After the Georgia event he will return to the White House on Oct. 24.
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump's 29th visit: Hannity party, Fort Myers rally. And voting too?
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