On Saturday, organizers had to close the top bowl of the arena because there were so many empty seats during Donald Trump’s appearance with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
“Thousands of people donned their red baseball caps or favorite Donald Trump T-shirts in the FLA Live Arena in Sunrise Saturday afternoon to see the former president and conservative darling Bill O’Reilly,” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. “The crowd chanted, ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ while waiting for the two to appear. … Many seats remained empty in the cavernous arena. The top-level was closed and ticket buyers were ‘upgraded’ to the lower bowl.”
The event on Saturday was the first of four planned as part of Trump’s “History Tour” with O’Reilly. The tour continues in Orlando on Sunday, where ticket sales have also reportedly been slow, before heading to Houston and Dallas the following weekend.
According to reports, tickets for the “History Tour” ranged from $100 for upper deck seats to thousands of dollars for VIP packages. “Floor seats, a 45-minute reception before the show, and photos with Trump and O’Reilly” were included in the VIP packages.”
According to the Orlando Sentinel, a political expert recently stated “if not many people show, then I think democratic and liberal critics will say that it shows that the Trump phenomenon has maybe hit its peak. And that there is a limit to what he can get away with.”
According to the Sun-Sentinel, Saturday’s event featured Trump “deriding the current president, claiming the election was stolen, and portraying the country under Joe Biden as a crime-ridden, inflation-plagued mockery overrun by foreign criminals.”
“Trump had few comments that veered from what he has often said publicly,” the newspaper reports. “But he made the occasional unrehearsed comment. When the microphone failed and O’Reilly went silent, Trump said he thought something had happened to him.”
“I thought he went down, which frankly would have been very exciting,” Trump said.
As per Rawstory, the newspaper also notes that “members of the Proud Boys white nationalists — a group that has resorted to political violence to achieve its ends — were present.”
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