Former President Donald Trump’s planned appearance in Mobile, Alabama, this coming Saturday was canceled over concerns that the event would take a partisan turn, NBC 15 reported this week.
Trump was supposed to be the keynote speaker at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park but park commissioners scrapped the plan when details of Trump’s intentions emerged after contact with the Republican Party.
“It became apparent that it was going to be a partisan political event, rather than just a patriotic event planned for that evening,” commission chairman Bill Tunnell told the station.
What were they expecting? Last Saturday, Trump held his first campaign-style rally since leaving the White House. He spewed his same election lies and grievances, calling his defeat to Joe Biden “the crime of the century.”
A day later, he issued a statement lambasting two of his staunchest allies while he was in office, former Attorney General William Barr and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Barr had called Trump’s cries of election fraud “bullshit” in a magazine article and McConnell confirmed that he had told Barr to “inject some reality” into the president.
Tunnell said a 2012 rally in Mobile by presidential candidate Rick Santorum “was the straw that broke the camel’s back” for the commission to no longer allow partisan political assemblies in the public space.
“I’ll be honest, I feel some people just didn’t want it, not just it but President Trump,” local tea party activist Pete Riehm told NBC 15.
Trump’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The twice-impeached ex-president is now scheduled to appear Saturday at a “Save America” rally in Sarasota, Florida.