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One of the great mysteries of 2016 was why so many women voted for Donald Trump.

Despite being caught on a hot mic talking about grabbing women by the pu**y, nearly 20 sexual assault allegations, and well known accounts of treating his multiple wives horribly, Trump still received the votes of 44 percent of white college-educated women and 61 percent of non-college-educated white women.

Many observers were doubly confused because they had expected Hillary Clinton, as the first major party female nominee, to be especially strong with women. And she wasnt. Trump did poorly with African-American and Hispanic women, because he did poorly with all African-Americans and Hispanics. But he managed to actually win a narrow plurality among white women.

But that mystery has been easy to solve. Over the last three years I conducted dozens of focus groups with both college-educated and non-college-educated female Trump voters. And the answer given most commonly for why they voted for Donald Trump is I didnt vote for Donald Trump. I voted against Hillary Clinton.

In 2016, Democrats understood that Hillary Clinton was a deeply polarizing candidate. But even they didnt grasp the full magnitude of it. Right-leaning and Republican female voters had spent more than a decade hating both Clintons, and they didnt stop just because Hillarys opponent was an unrepentant misogynist.

In fact, Bill Clintons legacy of similarly disgusting behavior with womenand Hillary Clintons defense of her husbandhad the effect of blunting Trumps own execrable track record. These women voters decided that either way, thered be a guy with a long history of sexual malfeasance living in the White House.

Podcast July 10 2020

On today's Bulwark Podcast, Sarah Longwell, Jonathan V. Last, and Bill Kristol join Charlie Sykes to discuss women voter...

But after Trumps victory, something started happening almost immediately. Womeneven those who voted for Trump in 2016began shifting away from the president.

In the 2018 midterm elections that delivered Democrats 40 congressional seats and control of the House of Representatives, support for Republicans from both college-educated women and non-college-educated white women dropped by 5 points.

And the relationship has gotten worse.

A recent New York Times Upshot/Siena College Poll showed Trump trailing Joe Biden by 22 points with women. Thats 9 points bigger than the gender gap was in 2016.

And while much has been made of college-educated women in the suburbs ditching Trump, a recent ABC/Washington Post survey shows that Trumps support with white non-college-educated women has fallen by 11 points.

After nearly three years of conducting focus groups with women who held their nose and voted for Trump in 2016, this decline hasnt surprised me. He was holding on to many of those voters with a wing and a prayer and strong economy. When everything began to fall apart, these female Trump leaners went running for the exits.

From the beginning of his presidency these women gave Trump low marks for his tweeting and divisivenessbut they also gave him credit for the strong economy and relative prosperity of the last few years.

His perceived business acumen was one of the top reasons many of these women were willing to take a flyer on him in the first place. Never forget that for many Americans, their impressions of Trump were formed less by his presidential campaign than by his role on The Apprentice where he was, through the wonders of editing and reality TV storytelling, presented as a decisive, successful businessman.

In late 2019 and early 2020 with a roaring economy and a bunch of abstract foreign policy scandals consuming the media and the elites whom these voters generally despise and distrust, even Trump-voting-women who rated the presidents performance as very bad werent entirely sure what they would do in 2020. There was still a crowded field of Democratic candidatesmany of whom were living, breathing representations of the far-left caricature that Republicans paint of Democrats.

But by March of 2020, everything had changed.

First, Joe Biden blew out Bernie Sanders and the rest of the Democratic field.

In my focus groups, Biden had consistently outperformed all other Democrats among the female Trump voters who were souring on the president. In hypothetical head-to-head matchups, almost none of the women would take Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren over Trump, but a handful would typically (if not enthusiastically) pick Biden over Trump.

It cannot be overstated how much better of a candidate Joe Biden is for attracting disaffected Republican votersespecially womenthan any of the other Democrats who ran this cycle.

Then on March 11 the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic. Two days later, the United States declared a state of emergency.

No one in America will forget what happened next: Lockdowns; PPE shortages; 130,000 deaths; staggering unemployment.

And every night on television voters saw a president both unwilling and incapable of providing clear and coherent leadership.

Since March, I have conducted the focus groups virtually and watched Trumps position with women weaken in real time.

Interestingly, in the early days of the pandemic the women in the focus groups were frustrated with Trump, but didnt necessarily hold him responsible for everything that was happening. He hadnt done great, they said, but it was a tough situation for any president to handle.

It wasnt until the killing of George Floyd and the resulting protests that the bottom started to drop out.

Two weeks after Floyds death I ran a focus group with seven women from swing statesall of whom voted for Trump but currently rated him as doing a very bad job.

Only one was leaning toward voting for him again. Three were definitely going to vote for Biden. The other three were still making up their minds. But even these undecideds were unequivocal in their distaste for Trumps posture on race and his handling of the protests. They actively recoiled.

One of the Trump voters who had decided to vote for Biden said, The stakes are too high now. Its a matter of life and death.

Thats a pretty a good distillation of why Trump has been shedding support from women over the last few months. The multiple crises laid bare the fact that Donald Trump isnt the savvy businessman these women voted for. Instead, they see him as a divisive president whos in over his head.

And they see that his inability to successfully navigate this environment has real-world consequences for actual people.

Average voters werent moved by Trumps obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation, or his quid-pro-quo with Ukraine, or his many personal scandals. But when people are unemployed, or dying, and the streets are on fire, they want a president who isnt winging it.

They want someone who knows how the world works and can make the government perform the kind of functions that only it can do. Like managing a coordinated national response to a pandemic. Or using the bully pulpit to bring the nation together during a moment of crisis.

Donald Trump and his campaign think they can stop the bleeding with women by leaning into the culture wars and highlighting looters, rioters, and vandals pulling down statues. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of these voters. They dont see Trump as someone who can protect them from the chaosthey think hes the source of it.

Which isnt to say that the race couldnt turn around for one reason or another. I suppose that crazier things have happened in American politics. (Though I cant think of many off the top of my head.)

But the reality is that no modern president has done more to alienate female voters. His whole life Trump has treated women with disdain. And they are now poised to return the favor.

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What Women Want - The Bulwark

Three days before President Trumps latest rally, in a state that Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016, the only thing that seems clear is that the presidents team has no idea what to expect.

Mr. Trumps campaign is planning an event at an airport hangar in Portsmouth, N.H. But the states governor, Chris Sununu, a Republican, has said he will not be attending. It isnt clear how many other Republican elected officials will come. The number of attendees could be low, or it could be expansive. There could be lots of people drifting in from Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts.

Campaign officials believe they will be able to prevent the kind of ticket prank that helped turn Mr. Trumps rally last month in Tulsa, Okla., into a far smaller event than expected but they still cannot say for sure. And most significantly, there is the looming threat of the coronavirus spreading in a crowd where attendees will be in relatively close quarters, despite being mostly outdoors.

Its not what we need right now in terms of Covid, said Tom Rath, a Republican former New Hampshire attorney general. We have been very, very fortunate our number of deaths are quite small.

Mr. Sununu, in particular, is threading a needle in a year when he is up for re-election in a swing state, and has gotten praise for how he has handled the coronavirus crisis, Mr. Rath said.

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday night, Mr. Sununu said he might have a chance to see Mr. Trump during his swing through the state, but it would not be at the rally on Saturday.

Im not going to put myself in the middle of a crowd of thousands of people, if thats your question specifically, Mr. Sununu said.

The Trump campaign is attempting a reboot of the reboot that fizzled out just a few weeks ago the June 20 rally in Tulsa that the president and his team bragged had spurred nearly one million ticket requests. In the end, it drew only about 6,200 people to the 19,000-seat arena.

Since then, campaign officials and the White House have discussed ways to allow Mr. Trump to hit the stump the way he wants to at big rallies without endangering people. On Wednesday, a leading health official in Tulsa said that Mr. Trumps rally probably contributed to a drastic increase in coronavirus cases there.

Also on Wednesday, Max Miller, the head of the advance team at the White House, was announced as the deputy campaign manager for presidential operations. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Miller to assume the role after Brad Parscale, the campaign manager, suggested that Mr. Trump choose a person with whom he has a personal relationship to help oversee the rallies.

For now, the campaign is treating the Saturday evening rally as a potential prototype for future events. Some requests from the president have not yet come to pass, according to a person familiar with the planning, such as his interest in adorning his rally with statues of founding fathers. Preserving statues of historical figures, including from the Confederacy, has become a cause for the president in recent weeks.

And Trump campaign officials dismissed the impact of the teenage TikTok users who claimed responsibility for sabotaging the presidents rally in Tulsa last month. Those ticket requests were counted when Mr. Parscale hyped the rally online, officials said. But they weeded out those requests and still thought that they could fill an arena as well as a space reserved for an overflow crowd with the presidents supporters in a red state that he won by more than 36 points four years ago.

Still, contact information from ticket registration for the New Hampshire rally was being cross-referenced with data in previous lists of supporters, in an effort to better protect themselves from online tricksters.

The more visible problem with the Tulsa event, officials conceded, was that they grossly underestimated how frightened their own supporters would be to attend an indoor rally at all. It was not clear whether they would face the same problem for the event at an airfield in New Hampshire.

The campaign this time selected a mostly outdoor venue, and has been strongly encouraging attendees to wear face masks, all in the hopes of easing health concerns as officials try to stage large social gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic. But officials say they are aware that they cannot force people out of their homes and into the venue and there was a chance that the rally crowd would be thinner than expected, again.

Mr. Parscale, chastened by last months experience, was not hyping any crowd numbers ahead of the weekend rally.

The difficulty in giving Mr. Trump the kind of adoring rallies that he seeks has been growing more and more apparent to White House officials and campaign advisers. The campaign last month canceled a planned rally in Mobile, Ala., where the president was expected to campaign for Tommy Tuberville in his Senate runoff on Tuesday against Jeff Sessions.

In the past, when Mr. Trump has held rallies in Mobile, he has had to move his event to the Ladd-Peebles Stadium, which seats 43,000 people, because of high demand. But officials say the days of filling stadiums with that kind of capacity were behind them, for now.

Tulsa was not the first time the Trump campaign had been flooded with bogus ticket sign-ups online. Officials say they comb through all of the sign-ups and look to see whether the person requesting a ticket is a registered Republican, or has any history of voting for a Republican candidate at all. If they dont, those requests are often discarded.

Registering for a rally means youve RSVPd with a cellphone number and we constantly weed out bogus numbers, Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. These phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking. What makes this lame attempt at hacking our events even more foolish is the fact that every rally is general admission entry is on a first-come-first-served basis and prior registration is not required.

View original post here:
What Will Trumps Rally in New Hampshire Be Like? Its Anyones Guess - The New York Times

Lin-Manuel Miranda tells USA TODAY's Brian Truitt what resonates with him now about "Hamilton," ahead of the musical's release to Disney+. USA TODAY

If you're like us and have had the "Hamilton" movie playing on repeat since it arrived on streaming July 3, you're probably wondering what comes next? What can I watch that will keep me satisfied?

The parodies of course.

The Broadway smash hit has spawned a variety of parodies that re-imagine the music, message or both. Here are some of our favorites:

Weird Al Yankovic's"The Hamilton Polka"

By July 4, comic singer Weird Al Yankovic was out with a new video for "The Hamilton Polka." The track was initially released in 2018 as part of Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamildrops" series.

Thehilarious video features actual scenes from the musical set to a polka medley, so it appears as if actors from the original cast, such as Daveed Diggs (Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson) and Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr) are doing the singing.

"Huge thanks to Lin-Manuel, (director) Tommy Kail, and the rest of my Ham pals for creating the best thing ever," Yankovic wrote on YouTube. The clip had been watched almost 1 million times as of midday Friday and had more than 2,000 comments.

'Hamilton' for newbies: Does Lin-Manuel Miranda's Disney+ movie live up to the Broadway hype?

Miranda responded to Yankovic's video on Twitter, tweeting a GIF from "Lord of the Rings."

'Hamilton Act 1 but it's Muppets'

Even the Muppets are getting in on the action, with a clip of them performing the entire first act floating around on YouTube. Well, sort of.

It's actually the work of voice actor Ricky Downes III.

Kermit the Frog is Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr is Gonzo, Miss Piggy is Eliza Schuyler ... and, well, you get the idea.

'Hamilton Mask-up Parody Medley'

Another popular parody reworks lyrics from the show, turning it into a commentary on the current coronavirus pandemic. The video comes from the Holderness family of Raleigh, North Carolina, which regularly produces comedy videos for social media.

Father Penn Holderness, a former TV news anchor, stars in the clip, arguing with himself over whether COVID-19 is real.

"2020. Any city," he says. "Pardon me, do you have germs, sir? No, I don't. And that's my business, not yours, sir. I have my rights and have my freedom. To be sure, sir. But this corona is a sham. I'm getting nervous, sir."

The Hillary Rodham Clinton version

A classic clip originally from just before the 2016 presidential election features actors portraying Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It resurfaced recently.

In addition to Trump and Clinton, actors also portray a number of other politicians, including Bernie Sanders and Tim Kaine.

"Hillary ... Rodham ... Clinton," the actress says. "I'm here to save us from armageddon. I just have to get past this piece of dung. Waste of space. Orange disgrace."

"Trump" gets in plenty of digs of his own, such as this one: "How does a moon-faced schemer ... wife of a cheater ... elected to the New York Senate ... then end up in the cabinet of her former nemesis ... the president she ran against? I like to speak in yuge run-on sentences."

Contributing: Brian Truitt, USA TODAY

Follow Gary Dinges on Twitter @gdinges

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From Weird Al's polka to the mask-up medley, these 'Hamilton' parodies are keeping us satisfied - USA TODAY

Amid historic nationwide protests calling for racial justice, President Donald Trump retweeted a video last Sunday showing a supporter yelling "white power!"

Then, more than three hours and thousands of views later, the tweet was deleted and the White House issued a statement claiming the president "did not hear" what the supporter could clearly be heard saying.

As startling as it was, it was only the latest instance of the president using his vast social media presence to magnify racist messaging to a segment of his political base, ahead of the November election.

President Donald Trump speaks during a news briefing at the White House in Washington, July 2, 2020.

One critic says it's part of a growing pattern on the part of Trump, his campaign and allies to push racially inflammatory language and then, after widespread outrage, claim ignorance.

Leah Wright Rigueur, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of "The Loneliness of the Black Republican," calls that pattern "convenient."

"If it was actual ignorance, we wouldn't see this happening repeatedly and we also wouldn't see the same kind of targeted type of retweets, tweeting commentary, etc. So, it just seems like a very convenient shield as defense to use, when once again they find themselves in the position that they're often in," Rigueur told ABC News.

Days after he retweeted the "white power" clip, despite criticism from even members of his own Republican Party, the president had yet to condemn the racist message he had promoted.

The White House said deleting the tweet was enough.

"The president did not hear that phrase in that portion of the video, and when it was signaled to him that this was in there he took that tweet down, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a Fox News interview on Monday, adding that the president shared the video featuring the racist phrase to "stand with his supporters who are oftentimes demonized."

The pattern goes beyond the president's own words and actions.

Earlier in June, senior Trump campaign adviser and former White House aide Mercedes Schlapp shared a disturbing video on her Twitter page featuring a man wielding a chainsaw and yelling the n-word while chasing away demonstrators protesting the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Schlapp later claimed she did not hear the racist language that appears immediately in the clip.

"I deeply apologize and I retweeted without watching the full video," Schlapp said in a statement to ABC News.

And Facebook last month removed multiple Trump campaign ads that featured symbols similar to those used by Nazis in concentration camps to denote political prisoners, liberals and communists, among others.

Just two days after the president shared the "white power" video, Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson posted a racist meme on her personal Instagram account on Tuesday that called Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and the first Somali refugee elected to Congress, a "terrorist."

In the image, Omar is featured saying she hates Trump, with the president replying, "most terrorists do."

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump uses his phone during a roundtable discussion at the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, June 18, 2020.

All this comes after Trump, in late May, at the height of the George Floyd protests, tweeted, "Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way," he continued, "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

The phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" originated in 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, when Miami Police Chief Walter Headley used it speaking about violent crime in the segregated city.

He boasted that Miami hadn't "faced serious problems with civil uprisings and looting because I've let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts," according to the Miami Herald.

Headley became known for bearing down particularly hard on communities of color with policing policies such as stop-and-frisk and use of patrol dogs.

When asked why he used the same phrase, Trump said he wasn't aware of its history. "I've heard that phrase for a long time. I don't know where it came from or where it originated," Trump said, adding, "I've also heard from many other places. But, I've heard it for a long time, as most people have."

Twitter placed a warning on his tweet, saying it "violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence." But it was not taken down by the social media company because, according to Twitter, it "may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible."

US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center on June 20, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, told ABC News he believes Trump and his allies are doubling down on racist messaging in order to reach a core group of supporters who've backed him throughout his presidency, saying "that coalition is fueled by racism and fear."

Chamberlain said it's a key reason Trump won in 2016.

"They were able to mobilize the racist base in the Republican Party," he said, arguing it continues to be a central part of their strategy in 2020.

The recent controversies come as Trump's polling averages show him down 9 points nationally to former Vice President Joe Biden, according to FiveThirtyEight.

In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, Biden leads Trump by 14 points, with 50% of registered voters saying they would support him if the election were held today.

In that same poll, Biden has a commanding lead among minority voters. Black voters overwhelmingly support Biden at 79%, while Trump is at 5%. For Hispanic and Latino voters, Biden currently sits at 64% while Trump at 25%.

But beyond reinforcing racist views within his base, the messaging would seem to have little chance of winning over new voters he needs.

Unlike Chamberlain, Rigueur says she doesn't think sending racist messages -- and then claiming ignorance -- is a part of a strategy to energize the base but rather, she maintains, it's "a reflection [of] his gut instincts."

And in a tight election, she argues, the racist language makes it harder for those Black voters who do support Trump to defend him moving forward.

"There's no amount of explaining away that a Black supporter of Trump can do even on social media, that would justify that, so it makes it really hard, especially makes it a really hard sell," Rigueur said. "I think that, you know, that discrepancy or that dissonance, is actually going to be really important moving into the 2020 election. You don't have coverage anymore."

These inflammatory comments also could drive a wedge between his staunch supporters and the moderate voters who back some of the president's policies, as some may be wary about being associated with such messages when the country is in a moment of soul searching on issues of race.

Chamberlain said these incidents aren't exclusive to the president's time in the Oval Office, saying they happened during his 2016 presidential campaign.

"He started with dog whistles like questioning (President Barack) Obama's birth certificate, to outright racist attacks like calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. That's how he started his campaign. Then over the last four years all we've seen is more and more of that. ... I wouldn't call it a pattern, I would call it the foundation of the Trump presidency," said Chamberlain.

In November 2015, then-candidate Trump, retweeted a photo of inaccurate crime statistics showing a disparate rate of "black-on-black" crime, which has often been touted as a retort to the Black Lives Matter movement.

In an interview with then Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, Trump said, "Am I going to check every statistic? I get millions and millions of people @realdonaldtrump by the way," Trump continued, "All it was is a retweet, it wasn't from me."

Hillary Clinton looks on as Donald Trump speaks during the final presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Oct.19, 2016.

In July 2016, Trump tweeted a photoshopped image of Hillary Clinton in front of a background of cash, juxtaposed to a red Star of David, reading "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever."

The tweet was blasted as anti-Semitic and then later deleted. It was then tweeted again without the Star of David. Critics said linking the two images of money and the Star of David were a nod to the anti-Semitic trope that Jewish people only care about money.

Then-Hillary Clinton's director of Jewish outreach for her 2016 campaign said in a statement that "Donald Trump's use of a blatantly anti-Semitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it's a part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern."

The Trump campaign then did not immediately reply to ABC News for comment. However, Trump later told CNN that, "These false attacks by Hillary Clinton trying to link the Star of David with a basic star, often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior, showing an inscription that says 'Crooked Hillary is the most corrupt candidate ever' with anti-Semitism is ridiculous.'"

Donald Trump Jr. appear on ABC's, "The View," Nov. 7, 2019.

The president's eldest son is also sparking controversy with his own social media posts.

During the Democratic primary, Donald Trump Jr. posted a tweet questioning California Sen. Kamala Harris' race and whether she was an "American Black." It was met with widespread backlash by many of her supporters and fellow candidates who called the tweet racist and ugly.

A spokesman for Trump Jr. told ABC News in June 2019 that "Don's tweet was simply him asking if it was true that Kamala Harris was half-Indian because it's not something he had ever heard before."

"And once he saw that folks were misconstruing the intent of his tweet he quickly deleted it," the spokesman said.

In response to the president's "white power" retweet, John Cohen, an ABC News contributor who previously served as acting undersecretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, said, "he has a tendency to post or say things that are either inaccurate, inflammatory and sometimes they can even be dangerous because they incite people to violence."

Cohen told ABC News that if the president and his allies just did this one time, it could be seen as a mistake. "This White House has on multiple occasions mimicked the language and rhetoric of white supremacist thought leaders," he said.

This past week, just days after retweeting the "white power" video, Trump continued to inflame racial tensions. On Wednesday, he blasted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to paint the words "Black Lives Matter" on the street outside Trump Tower, calling it a "symbol of hate" and said that "maybe" the police might stop it from happening.

The president responded on Twitter to an interview in which Hawk Newsome, president of the Greater New York City Black Lives Matter chapter, said, "If this country doesn't give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it."

Trump responded by calling that "Treason."

While it remains to be seen whether the president's racial messaging through retweets and reposting will work, many corporations have backed the Black Lives Matter movement, announcing their support -- via social media campaigns.

Read more from the original source:
Why do Trump and allies repost racist messaging and will it help his reelection effort? - ABC News

Two weeks after their animated outcry to a coronavirus mask mandate went viral, South Florida Freedom Advocates dont care about being mocked by the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Whoopi Goldberg and Stephen Colbert.

Cristina Gomez said she isn't embarrassed about being mocked on national television by Jimmy Fallon, Whoopie Goldberg, Stephen Colbert and other pundits for her acerbic, finger-waving, anti-mask rant last month at the Palm Beach County Commission meeting heard round the world.

"Theyre bullies looking for laughs," the unemployed West Palm Beach resident said. "Thats OK. I have thick skin."

Few people know Gomez, 28, by name. But millions know her by the trending hashtag "Angry Florida Woman" and viral video clip of her impassioned public comments before commissioners passed a countywide mask mandate on June 23.

In a two-minute stream of consciousness, she threatens the countys health director with a citizen's arrest "for crimes against humanity," tells commissioners they belong "in a psyche ward" and rails about the devil, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, pedophiles, 5G cameras and "the deep state."

She wasn't the only self-proclaimed "pro freedom" fighter whose passionate reaction to the mandate raised the eyebrows of social media influencers including actors Jamie Foxx and Don Cheadle.

Co-starring in a viral montage on HBOs "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" was a supporting cast led by Arlindo "Butch" Dias, an engineer who pointed at the Stars and Stripes behind county commissioners and screamed, "Id die for that flag!"

Cindy Falco-DiCorrado, a former Boynton Beach advisory board member, is seen in a "Trump Girl" shirt calling the coronavirus crisis "a planned-demic" and asking "where do you derive the authority to regulate human breathing?"

Theresa Roberts sneered as she compared the mask mandate to Nazi Germany forcing Jews to wear a star. And Beth Bohon launched this memorable salvo: "I dont wear a mask for the same reason I don't wear underwear: Things gotta breathe."

The internet and late-night television went wild.

"That was like Crazytown," stunned co-host Sonny Hostin said on ABCs "The View," while co-host Meghan McCain compared it to "the rantings of someone at an airport bar."

A Twitter parody mixed memorable soundbites with footage of exasperated reactions from characters in the hit NBC show "Parks and Rec." Media outlets from as far away as England and Dubai carried stories about Florida residents linking a "devils mask law to the deep state."

"Yes, it appears America isnt just dealing with a deadly strain of coronavirus, it's also dealing with a deadly strain of stupidity," Trevor Noah said on Comedy Centrals "The Daily Show."

For local leaders trying to stem the coronavirus pandemic, the unwanted publicity 20 years after the 2000 presidential election fiasco gave the county another black eye.

"The images you saw on (June 23) of people loudly proclaiming that they're not going to wear masks were a poor reflection of our community and they don't reflect our community," State Attorney Dave Aronberg said three days later at a coronavirus briefing.

"What does reflect our community" he said, "is all the people out there who are socially distancing, who are wearing masks, who are taking care of one another. Thats Palm Beach County. Those are the people whose images should be shown worldwide."

We are just normal people

Despite the protests, officials say the mask mandate is widely supported in the county, where coronavirus cases have spiked in recent weeks, helping make South Florida one of the national hotspots of the deadly respiratory disease.

And since early April, scientists have been unified about the effectiveness of facial coverings significantly reducing the transmission of COVID-19, with recommendations coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Johns Hopkins University.

"Its really unfortunate the response we got for such a common sense mandate to happen in Palm Beach County," Dr. Sam Fahmy of Boca Raton Regional Hospital said on CNN.

"We know scientifically that masks are proven to prevent infection and transmissions from one person who is sick to another. The fact that people are fighting this hard against wearing masks is really disheartening."

But many protesters who opposed the mask mandate werent happy with the publicity, either.

They thought it focused too much on the most sensational comments and overlooked the movements larger messages of resisting government overreach and protecting personal freedoms.

"To be painted in the media like we are crazy people is really annoying," said Josie Machovec, a Boca Raton homemaker, who said the mask law "unconstitutionally" mandates that citizens wear "medical devices."

"Were just normal people. We just want to keep ourselves healthy in the way that we feel is best."

Wary of the snitch line

She said many of the protesters found each other on the Facebook page of a grassroots group called South Florida Freedom Advocates.

They include doctors, lawyers, nurses, even Junior League members. Many of them take cues from President Donald Trump, who refuses to wear a mask in public.

Some have attended public meetings and protests to decry coronavirus-related restrictions in other Florida communities. Many are anti-vaccine activists.

A pinned post on the groups page warns viewers about "a snitch line" and it lists a phone number for Palm Beach Countys COVID Education Compliance team, formed last month to take complaints about businesses that fail to follow social distance and safety guidelines and help them conform.

But the South Florida Freedom Advocates Facebook page encourages members to call the "snitch line" to "blast out the businesses and individuals that discriminated against them."

Machovec, one of four plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed June 30 to overturn the countys mask mandate, said she cant wear a mask because she suffers from asthma. She said she gets harassed by customers and employees when she goes shopping at Costco.

Angelique Contreras said she cant wear a mask because of anxiety stemming from abuse she suffered earlier in her life. She said she shouldnt have to explain herself to shop owners who confront her about not wearing a mask every time she goes shopping.

In a recent tweet, Contreras blamed the mask mandate on her asthmatic husband getting fired from his job at a restaurant.

Slaves comment preceded resignation

Fights and confrontations involving customers refusing to wear masks have erupted in stores and restaurants across Florida and the United States.

On May 29, workers at the Sunshine Flea Market in suburban Lake Worth Beach called Palm Beach County Sheriffs deputies after Gomez ("Angry Florida Woman") and her mother refused their order to leave the store. Gomez said she got kicked out for not wearing a mask.

The next day, Gomez returned to the flea market to stage a protest in the parking lot. She and Falco-DiCorrado, a 61-year-old grandmother, were both arrested on trespassing charges.

It was Gomezs 28th birthday. Falco-DiCorrados arrest that day was captured on video.

In 2017, Falco-DiCorrado resigned from the Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, a volunteer advisory board, after being accused of making racially insensitive remarks during a public discussion about sanctuary cities.

Falco-DiCorrado allegedly told a resident at the meeting to speak "better English" and allegedly told black residents, "Youre lucky we brought you over as slaves, or else youd be deported, too."

At the time, Falco-DiCorrado said her comments were misunderstood and she didnt mean any harm.

I don't see anything crazy

As for the viral video clips from the June 23 County Commission meeting, she said she wasnt offended about being mocked on TV and in social media.

"When I watch it, I don't see anything crazy," Falco-DiCorrado said. "I see logic. I see people asking honest questions and being human. But I know they put the precursor there, like CNN did, to say, Oh look at these crackpots. I hope it wakes people up."

After video of the meeting went viral, Gomez said some critics tweeted her mug shot from her May 30 arrest.

A former bank teller and bar server, Gomez said she spoke from her heart and not from a script. She said she was surprised her remarks received so much attention.

"I have no credentials. Why don't you let the world hear a doctor tell about how bad a mask is," she said, referring to comments at the June 23 meeting by Dr. Heidi Schaeffer of Miami, who questioned the effectiveness of masks.

"All of a sudden everyone starts texting me. Youre on The View. Youre on the Late Show with Jimmy Fallon, and celebrities are posting me on their Instagram," Gomez said, referring to critical comments by Foxx and comedian Lil Duval.

Dias, the West Palm Beach man who identified himself on the video as "a patriot" before screaming at county commissioners, said some co-workers are mad at him because of the publicity he received. He asked that the name of the public agency he works for not be mentioned in this story.

Dias, 61, said it was the first time he spoke at a public meeting. If he sounded angry, he said, thats because he was offended that it seemed as if commissioners had already made up their minds before voting to pass the mask mandate and didnt care what the protesters were saying.

Is this some political stunt?

Part of Dias speech was singled out by Colbert on "The Late Show:" After Dias is shown screaming that he "would die for that Constitution," Colbert quipped, "Well, congratulations. If you dont wear a mask, you got a good shot at it."

Dias shrugged it off. "I don't watch any of that garbage," he said.

"They basically made us look like a bunch of kooks. But its funny that everybody that had a patriotic view loved it, everybody who had a Christian view loved it. Only the ones that had liberal views hated it."

County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay, a frequent target of the protesters because of her staunch support for coronavirus protections, said she was disappointed that people who identified themselves as doctors and nurses spoke against the mask mandate.

"The Florida Medical Association put out a statement begging local governments to take action and implement mask ordinances and here they have doctors facing us and saying its all nonsense," said McKinlay, whose district includes farming communities around Lake Okeechobee that have been hit hard by the pandemic.

"They follow their nonsense claims by standing in the back of our room raising a gigantic Trump 2020 flag. It's like, Really? What is this all about? Is this really what's best for the public or is this some political stunt?"

Dismissing claims by the protesters that mask supporters want to vote Trump out of office, McKinlay pointed out that at least two Republican mayors in Florida Carlos Gimenez of Miami-Dade County and Lenny Curry of Jacksonville put mask mandates in place.

We are not going away

A handful of the same "pro freedom" fighters showed up at the most recent county commission meeting on Tuesday. Mayor Dave Kerner stopped the meeting at one point and threatened to remove one person from the room because she wasnt wearing a mask.

"I want them to realize we are not going away. We are not just going to accept their mandate," said Machovec, who appears in some of the viral video montages, including the "Parks and Rec" parody. "They are not kings and queens. They are elected officials who need to be held accountable."

Like many other protesters, Machovec said she doesnt know of any friends or relatives who have contracted COVID-19. "The truth of the matter is the survival rate of this virus is 96.6 percent, so I have a higher chance of dying in a car accident than I do from contracting COVID-19," she said.

County Commissioner Gregg Weiss said he was disappointed that the publicity gave the world an inaccurate portrayal of how the community feels about coronavirus precautions.

"This is a small minority of people who live in Palm Beach County. They are entitled to represent their views and beliefs, but they don't represent what the majority of Palm Beach County believes and what the majority of our residents are concerned about," he said.

On the talk-show "The View," host Whoopi Goldberg offered a deal for the Palm Beach County mask protesters.

"You don't want to wear a mask? We just need to have your name and phone number so when you get sick and you go rushing to the hospital for help, people can actually say, Oh, you're the one who said don't wear a mask and here you are (because) you're ill," she said.

"I want to run it into your face because that means that you, because of your insanity, have taken time away from a doctor who could be working on someone who did do the right thing who got it anyway. ... Please don't be ridiculous. Just do this. Nobody cares about your political vision. We're talking about your health."

Staff writer Hannah Morse contributed to this story.

jcapozzi@pbpost.com

@JCapozzipbpost

This story originally published to palmbeachpost.com, and was shared to other Florida newspapers in the USA TODAY Network - Florida.

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Floridas mask foes shrug off national TV bullies poking fun at them - The Ledger