Trump rally in Prescott Valley delayed due to Ivana Trump's death
Ivana Trump, who was the former president's first wife, died at the age of 73 in New York. FOX 10's Stephanie Bennett reports.
PHOENIX (AP) - Former President Donald Trump is postponing a rally scheduled for Saturday in Arizona following the death of his first wife.
Trump said the rally in Prescott Valley was rescheduled for July 22. Trump planned the rally to support the candidates he’s backing in Republican primaries, including Kari Lake for governor and Blake Masters for Senate.
Lake wrote on Twitter that she’s saddened the rally was cancelled, "however I know firsthand that it is important to be surrounded by family when you lose a Mother."
Prospective attendees react to postponement
Some people who planned on attending the event were disappointed to hear of the postponement.
"This will be my weekend vacation I guess," said Laurie Elayda, who came to Arizona from California. "I’ll just watch it on the internet next week."
Ivana Trump's life
Ivana Trump, the mother of the former president’s three oldest children, died in New York City at age 73, her family announced Thursday.
A Czech-born ski racer and sometime model, Ivana Trump, who was born Ivana Zelnickova, married the future president in 1977.
She became an icon in her own right, dripping with ’80s style and elegance, complete with accent and her signature beehive hairdo. She would eventually appear in the 1996 hit film "The First Wives Club" with the now-famous line, "Ladies, you have to be strong and independent, and remember, don’t get mad, get everything."
Partners in love and business — with her playing roles such as manager of one of his Atlantic City casinos — Ivana and Donald were fixtures of New York's see-and-be-seen scene before their equally public, and messy divorce. Donald Trump had met his next wife, Marla Maples.
During the split, Ivana Trump accused him of rape in a sworn statement in the early 1990s. She later said that she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she felt violated.
Nevertheless, she ultimately remained friendly with her ex-husband, whom she famously called "The Donald." She enthusiastically backed his 2016 White House run and told the New York Post in 2016 that she was both a supporter and an adviser.
Donald Trump (White House photo)
PHOENIX, Arizona (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump sought to turn nationwide protests to his political advantage in a campaign appearance in the election swing state of Arizona on Tuesday, vowing to prevent “the left-wing mob” from pushing the United States into chaos. Trump, whose first rally of the coronavirus pandemic on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drew fewer supporters than expected and was seen as exposing weaknesses in his campaign, pushed a
law-and-order theme in Phoenix before a cheering audience of several-thousand young people. Trump pointed to demonstrators who tried to topple a statue of 19th-century U.S. President Andrew Jackson near the White House on Monday night, as well as an “autonomous zone” set up by protesters in Seattle, as reasons to keep him in office rather than electing Democrat Joe Biden on Nov. 3.
“It’s not the behavior of a peaceful political movement. It’s the behavior of totalitarians and dictators and people who don’t love our country,” he said.
Outside the Dream City church where Trump was speaking, police forcibly dispersed hundreds of protesters marching in an adjacent “free speech zone.”
Phoenix police declared the demonstration an unlawful assembly after protesters started blocking a street. Then officers in riot gear used flash-bang grenades - military-style percussion devices for crowd control - to push protesters well away from the church, a Reuters photographer at the scene said.
The city police department said it ordered demonstrators to disperse when the crowd began throwing objects at police, “blocking traffic and moving into an area protected for the presidential motorcade.”
In addition to flash-bang devices, police also used “pepper balls deployed into the ground and a burst of pepper spray” against the protesters, the department statement said, adding that no arrests were made.
Trump has been criticized for cozying up to autocratic leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He is also under attack from many Americans for his handling of the protests in response to the death of African American George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
On Tuesday, Trump said those protesting against racial injustice and police brutality “hate our history. They hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans.”
“We don’t bow down to left-wing bullies,” he said.
Trump, who narrowly won Arizona in 2016, is seeking to defend his foothold in the state as opinion polls showed Biden leading the Republican president, with Republican U.S. Senator Martha McSally trailing Democratic challenger Mark Kelly.
Earlier, Trump visited a newly built section of the border wall along the frontier with Mexico in San Luis, Arizona, a dusty, barren landscape where the temperature hit 102 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Using a black Sharpie pen, he autographed a plaque commemorating the 200th mile of the wall.
A campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border helped propel Trump to the White House in 2016.
The trip was Trump’s third this year to Arizona, which reported a record increase of more than 3,500 new cases of coronavirus infections on Tuesday. The state also saw record hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care units and numbers of patients on ventilators.
The president and his advisers have largely dismissed concerns about holding campaign events as coronavirus transmissions continue to climb in parts of the country.
Trump told the audience on Tuesday the virus, which originated in China, is known by many names, including “the kung flu,” a description that has drawn fire as an ethnic slur.
Additional reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, Ash Ponders and David Schwartz in Phoenix and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Writing by Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Sonya Hepinstall and Lincoln Feast.
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