BEDMINSTER TWP. – Members of a motorcycle club supporting President Donald Trump held a rally in the township’s free speech zone Saturday, minus the angry encounter one rally organizer had hoped to spark.
In inflammatory rhetoric, Bikers for Trump 2020 member Terry Beck of Hillsborough had said on a Facebook site that she hoped “hundreds” would come out to “intimidate the haters, make them cry and walk with their tails between their legs.”
She was referring to the People’s Motorcade, the anti-Trump group that regularly protests on Saturdays here.
Located at the intersection of Route 206 and Lamington Road near the Clarence Dillon Library, the protest area is about four miles east of Trump National Golf Club, where Trump stayed from Friday night to Sunday afternoon.
The President is also expected to return for a working vacation this Thursday, Aug. 8, through Aug. 18.
As it turned out, only 30 bikers showed up to join Beck, who stood talking to a Bedminster police officer when seen in the zone. Not only that, but their alleged enemies eschewed the zone, motorcading not once but twice down Lamington Road past Trump National, as Motorcade leader Jim Girvan of Branchburg chose not be baited by the pre-rally rhetoric.
“We’ll let them have their 15 minutes of fame,” he said.
Not that the twain didn’t meet at some point.
Rather than gather at the free speech zone, most motorcade members met at the township’s dog park on River Road. They then drove their vehicles along the standard route that took them past the President’s club on Lamington Road, down Rattlesnake Bridge Road, then back past Trump National to the library, where they collected the few motorcade members who had arrived late.
As expected, when they approached the library they were greeted by the bikers, some waving “Trump for 2020” signs and booing, but that was that.
Following a brief stop – in which both parties kept a respectable distance – helped in part by the noticeable presence of township police – the motorcade set off on a second loop before calling it a day.
Bedminster Mayor Lawrence Jacobs on Friday said township Police Chief Karl Rock was aware of the comments posted by Beck, as were the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office and U.S. Secret Service.
Jacobs said he was not overly concerned, as bikers have rallied before, “and there have not been incidents, but you’ve got to be prepared and ready for a situation.”
Posting on social media after the rally, Beck said the group would return to Bedminster on Sept. 21 and Nov. 2, hopefully with a more physical reaction from Trump adversaries.
In one post, she said she had hoped that a bicyclist who had protested her group, “would hit me to I could start that libtard a criminal record starting with an assault.”
Bikers interviewed early Saturday morning showed none of Beck’s ire.
Real estate agents Joe DeAngelis of Whitehouse Station and Joe Mullica of Sticklersville said they came simply to show support for President Trump.
This was not DeAngelis’ first appearance in Bedminster. He said that last year, he was among the hundreds of Bikers for Trump members who were invited to Trump National. Despite the cold and rainy weather, the bikers were feted with a barbecue and meeting with the President, he said.
“What people who’ve never met him don’t know is that he (Trump) is very hospitable,” he said.
Mullica, who took the one-hour and 40-minute ride from home that morning to join the rally, said he’d “go anywhere to support” the President.
According to published reports, Trump, while at his club on Saturday, once again crashed a wedding reception on the premises.
The reception was held some time following the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which a 20-year-old gunman walked into a Walmart and killed 22 and wounded 24, and just hours before a 24-year-old man killed nine and wounded 27 in Dayton, Ohio.
The shootings prompted U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-7, to issue a statement Sunday urging Congress to be “be called back into session as soon as possible to act on “a domestic counter-terrorism statute, and new measures to combat the spread of hateful ideologies online.
“After yesterday’s shootings in El Paso, it is beyond question that terrorists motivated by a common white supremacist ideology are committing deadly attacks against Jewish, Muslim, African-American, Hispanic and other non-white communities in the United States and around the world, and pose a clear and present danger to our national security,” he said.
“There is legislation pending in the House and Senate that would strengthen our government’s ability to defeat domestic terrorism, while making it harder for terrorists to acquire guns. Congress should be called back into session as soon as possible to act on this urgent threat. We should not wait until the summer district work period ends on Sept. 9 to take action that will protect the American people.”
Pending legislation, he said, included the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, of which he is a co-sponsor, “and which would beef up the Justice and Homeland Security Department units responsible for addressing this threat, while improving collection of data. Congress should quickly appropriate supplemental funds to both Departments, including for programs to counter violent extremism in the United States that the administration had previously cut.
“We should consider passing a domestic counter-terrorism statute, and new measures to combat the spread of hateful ideologies online.”
In a televised speech from the White House on Monday morning, the President offered condolences to those affected by the shootings and called for bi-partisan action to end the killings.
‘MAGA Party’
The free speech zone in Bedminster was set up two years ago to give people an opportunity to express their diverse political opinions.
Since then, those for and against Trump’s policies have aired their opinions, oftentimes together. While there have been a few minor confrontations in the past, protests have mostly been peaceful.
Beck’s social media posts for Saturday’s rally, however, were so fiery they drew concern from Girvan and others.
Among other things, Beck said the rally would “be like an emotional boxing match…while making the libtards cry. Hope to see 100s of bikers there.”
She linked another post to a People’s Motorcade post about the protest.
“This is the event the haters ‘think’ they’re having…when we show up, it’s gonna be a MAGA party,” Beck said, referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
She also promised a “Murphy Recall Signing Event,” referring to a recall petition for Gov. Phil Murphy, State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez and U.S. Sen. and Presidential hopeful Cory Booker, all Democrats.
“Can’t wait to get there already. I still can’t believe that it all started because I wanted to face the haters and challenge them,” she wrote.
She then singled out Girvan, calling him “The biggest libtard behind this hate movement.”
Source: The Bernardsville News