In return to Palm Beach, Trump’s motorcade steers clear of guncontrol advocates.
PALM BEACH — President Donald Trump’s administration applauded the “courageous” participants in Saturday’s March for Our Lives demonstrations across the U.S. — but his motorcade did not go near several hundred gun-control advocates who gathered along Trump’s customary route in West Palm Beach.
Trump, staying at his Mara-Lago estate for the weekend, visited his Trump International Golf Club in unincorporated West Palm Beach on Saturday morning and left just before 2 p.m. The presidential motorcade normally follows the most direct route from the golf club to Mar-a-Lago by heading east along Southern Boulevard, which would have taken the president past a March for Our Lives event in Dreher Park that drew 1,000 or more people in the early afternoon.
Several hundred of the Dreher Park demonstrators gathered along Southern in anticipation of Trump’s motorcade.
But the presidential convoy turned off Southern about a mile west of Dreher Park and headed north on Australian Avenue. The motorcade then took Okeechobee Boulevard and crossed into Palm Beach via the Royal Park Bridge, about 2 miles north of the Southern Boulevard bridge Trump normally takes.
The White House did not immediately respond to a question on why the president took the different route.
Asked if any safety or security concerns led to Saturday’s route change, a Secret Service spokeswoman responded that the agency “doesn’t comment on matters of security.”
In April last year, Trump’s motorcade also departed from its normal route when several hundred demonstrators gathered on Bingham Island for a protest demanding he release his income tax returns.
While Trump was at his golf club Saturday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters issued a statement commending those who were participating in the hundreds of March for Our Lives demonstrations across the U.S. Walters also highlighted Trump’s support for bipartisan congressional legislation to improve background checks and school safety and his call for a ban on “bump stock” devices that increase the rate of fire for semiautomatic weapons.
“We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today,” Walters said. “Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the President’s, which is why he urged Congress to pass the Fix NICS and STOP School Violence Acts, and signed them into law. Additionally, on Friday, the Department of Justice issued the rule to ban bump stocks following through on the President’s commitment to ban devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”
Trump, first lady Melania Trump and son Barron arrived at Palm Beach International Airport on Friday evening for Trump’s 15th visit to Palm Beach as president. They are scheduled to leave Palm Beach and return to Washington on Sunday afternoon.