Trump Hotel Sale Has DC MAGA Groupies Scared About Losing Their Safe Space – By Will Sommer (Daily Beast) / Jan 27 2020
The president’s hotel will soon have a new owner and it likely won’t be so Trump friendly any more.
Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C., went up for sale this month, with bids to take up the president’s 60-year lease on the federally owned Old Post Office due last Thursday. But while the winning bidder’s plans for the hotel likely won’t be known for a while, MAGA activists are already mourning the expected loss of what has become the capital’s social center for Trumpism.
“It’s the place to see and be seen when you’re in D.C.,” said Jacob Engels, a conservative political operative and protégé of former Trump adviser Roger Stone.
On Twitter, self-proclaimed “Democrat to Deplorable” pro-Trump personality John Goldman, who uses the name “Jack Murphy” online, lamented the hotel’s end.
“What will happen to the MAGA Networking and Social Scene in Washington DC then?” Goldman wrote. “There’s nothing like the Trump Hotel. Nor will many places be as accommodating.”
The Trump Organization didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Since opening in September 2016, the Trump International has become Washington’s hub for all levels of MAGA-world, from Cabinet secretaries and the president himself to hangers-on and red-hat-wearing tourists. The hotel’s lobby—ornate and ostentatious in typical Trumpian fashion—is a place to meet up with other Trump fans, and grab selfies with prominent officials and right-wing personalities. It’s also a place where Trumpists believe they’ll be protected from the kind of liberal hecklers who confronted then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a downtown restaurant in 2018—a kind of political Green Zone in an otherwise hostile city.
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