Women for Trump. Veterans for Trump. Gays for Trump. Latinos for Trump. Arab Christians for Trump. All were present Friday.
But Toddlers for Trump?
Tattoo artist Taren Meacham of Bankers Hill brought his infant daughter to the Donald Trump rally in San Diego, lifted her high and shouted: “Babies for Trump!”
Little Sarin-Ashir, 1 1/2, went into fan mode — clapping vigorously and then grabbing a Trump sign. She held it up, examined it, held it up again — amid deafening crowd cheers for the GOP candidate.
Inside cavernous Hall H at the San Diego Convention Center, many children were seen. They witnessed history as well as raucous humanity amid about 270 credentialed media.
Outside, Hillary Clinton supporter Samuel Huberta of Spring Valley held up a sign reading “Stay Classy San Diego.”
Not everyone got the memo. Hundreds yelled obscenities to a thumping “F-word” rap song, threw a few eggs and got into nonviolent face-to-face shouting matches a la manager vs. umpire in Major League Baseball. No harm, no foul.
But with 300 San Diego police officers joined by 300 sheriff’s deputies, police from nearby cities and and Secret Service agents, the Trump and anti-Trump factions were kept apart mostly (although never a few feet from photographers and camera people, including most Union-Tribune shooters.)
A large Confederate flag was displayed yards from Mexican flags at the entrance to the Gaslamp Quarter across the street from the Convention Center.
But the New York billionaire would have admired the capitalists in the Gaslamp, selling shirts, buttons and apparently knockoff “Make America Great” ball caps. Business was cutthroat in cases.
An angry Te Nicholas of Sarasota, Florida, shooed away three women trying to open a table of Trump gear near his more elaborate booth — feet from the trolley tracks.
“You’re setting up, and I’ve been here since this morning,” he told the women, one of whom muttered: “He’s got all that space over there.”
The trio ended up setting up their wares across the walkway — perhaps 20 feet distant.
Steve Scanlon, 51, of Ansonia, Connecticut, has been on the road with his Trumpalia for a while, he said — including in strife-torn Albuquerque.
“We were right in the middle” of the melee, he said.
A nonsense-sputtering 34-year-old transient who gave his name as “Goofy” tried to sell a plastic purse for $3 and shoes near an anti-Trump demonstration: “Hey hey, hey ho, The Donald’s got to go.”
Police didn’t make out like bandits, however. One ranking SDPD officer said Trump’s campaign wouldn’t pay their overtime.
