Agency :
Former President Donald Trump held a Fourth of July-themed rally Saturday night in Sarasota, Florida, across the state from where a tragedy has been unfolding for more than a week as firefighters, search dogs and emergency crews search for survivors in the collapse of a residential building just north of Miami Beach.
After a brief moment of silence for the victims and families of the tragedy as he took the stage, Trump quickly launched into a castigation of “cancel culture” and of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
The political rally in the midst of a disaster that has horrified the nation became a topic of discussion among aides to the former president and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Trump ally whose growing popularity with the former president’s supporters is becoming an increasing source of tension for both men, according to people familiar with their thinking.
After officials from the governor’s office surveyed the scene of the condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, Adrian Lukis, chief of staff to the governor, called Michael Glassner, a longtime Trump aide who is overseeing the Florida event, according to people familiar with the discussion. In a brief conversation, Lukis inquired whether the former president planned to continue with the event given the scale of the tragedy, two people said.
He was told there were no plans to reschedule.
A spokesperson for Trump, Liz Harrington, said that the rally in Sarasota was “3 1/2 hours away, approximately the same distance from Boston to New York, and will not impact any of the recovery efforts.”
She added that the former president “has instructed his team to collect relief aid for Surfside families both online and on-site at the Sarasota rally.DeSantis, who met Thursday with President Joe Biden when the president visited the site of the disaster, originally wanted to attend the rally but no longer plans to do so, aides said.
