Seddique Mateen, the father of the man who murdered 49 people and injured dozens more in Orlando in June, occupied a similar seat behind Clinton at an event Monday.
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And by the way … a lot of the people here – how many of you people know me?
Foley, who could be seen in the background in videos and photos of the event, raised his hand when Trump asked if the people featured in the seats directly behind the stage knew him. “When you get those seats, you sorta know the campaign”. Lauderdale, Florida for being seen on stage with the father of the Orlando nightclub terrorist, Seddique Mateen behind her at a rally in Kissimmee on August 8, but Trump had his own controversy sitting right behind him.
“Of course he likes Hillary because Hillary won’t say the words radical Islamic terrorism”, Trump added, ignoring the fact that Mateen’s father allegedly had no knowledge of his son’s plot to kill all those people at the LGBT nightclub in Florida.
After resigning from Congress in disgrace in 2006, former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley made a comeback in Palm Beach County politics years ago – becoming a familiar sight at GOP functions, Forum Club lunches and the county commission chambers, where the Washington Nationals hired him to lobby for a spring training complex in West Palm Beach. Clinton’s appearance at a Kissimmee, Fla., rally with the father of Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen seated prominently behind her earned a fifth of the amount of coverage that Trump’s ambiguous suggestion that Second Amendments advocates could “do something” about a Clinton administration’s Supreme Court justices got. The Times also wrote a scathing staff editorial leading that page with the headline “Further Into the Muck With Mr. Trump”.
“I would actually say that the media is nearly as crooked as crooked Hillary Clinton”, Trump said.
“He’s better than he was a week ago – I think he’s learned some very painful lessons”, Gingrich said, predicting Trump will “continue to grow” as a candidate. I’ve admired so much of what he’s done.
A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump or the campaign knew that Foley would be in attendance.
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Foley resigned his post in 2006 after scandalous claims that he had sent sexually suggestive emails and messages to congressional pages. “He’s a different breed of leader and a different breed of candidate”, Foley told the Sun Sentinel. Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said Clinton “disagrees with his views and disavows his support“, according to the Associated Press. The crowd, feeding off Trump, seemed to turn on me like a large animal, angry and unchained. And even if Trump weren’t planning to go off about Mateen, when you opponent has this kind of snafu, you make darn sure that you vet the VIP’s seated behind your own boss, not two days later.
