Early on Tuesday, Donald Trump finally seemed to catch up with his campaign manager Brad Parscale when he retweeted one of a handful of tweets from Parscale that whined about not being able to use an arena that the campaign wanted in Minneapolis for a rally this coming Thursday.
At issue was the fact that Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey is requiring the campaign to pre-pay the cost of the event — not terribly outside the realm of standard business practice, and definitely in line with what any contracted business dealing with Donald Trump should be doing, since he notoriously does not pay his bills.
Parscale was outraged — outraged, I tell you! — at… something. Was it the fact that the city wanted the campaign to pay for security at all? He whined that the Secret Service was in charge of security, not the Target Center. I guess Brad is ready to just publicly tell everyone he plans to stick taxpayers with the security bills for Trump’s campaign rallies, a clear violation of FEC law.
Was he outraged about the actual price tag? The city named a price of $530,000 for security, which Parscale compared to a health care rally held a decade ago by former President Barack Obama, at which the estimated cost for security was only $20,000. Of course, the minimum wage in Minneapolis ten years ago was the statewide and federal minimum of $7.25, whereas now minimum wage workers in the state’s largest city now make over $11 an hour.
There’s also the fact that you would charge more for security at a biker run than you would the county fair, and Trump rallies are far more akin to hard-drinking, fist-fighting biker gangs than to the relative petting zoo of a 2009 Barack Obama health care event.
Of course, Trump himself had to get in on it:
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
…which the mayor himself promptly responded to:
Yawn… Welcome to Minneapolis where we pay our bills, we govern with integrity, and we love all of our neighbors. https://t.co/v1cXvoD9uR
— Jacob Frey (@Jacob_Frey) October 8, 2019
