By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
On Tuesday, November 17, Secretary of State John Merrill (R) confirmed that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will return to Alabama for a campaign stop.
On Saturday, November 21, 2015, at 11 a.m., Trump will hold a rally at the Birmingham–Jefferson Convention Complex. Doors open at 9 a.m., and free tickets can be attained here.
Secretary Merrill said in a statement, “We are excited to have Donald Trump bring his campaign to Birmingham! I am confident that Mr. Trump’s appearance will be welcomed with enthusiasm, just as it was in Mobile.”
Secretary Merrill said, “We are very pleased with the way the SEC Primary has developed and what it means for our people to have personal interaction with these candidates. With the assistance and full support of the Alabama Legislature, one of the most significant things we have done in the Secretary of State’s Office is change the primary date to March 1. Since the March primary legislation passed, the top two Democratic candidates and eight of the top Republican candidates have made campaign stops in Alabama, which is unheard of for our state. As Secretary of State, I will continue to position Alabama and the South as a place where presidential candidates are willing to make an effort to visit and meet our remarkable people.”
The last time Donald Trump, who is 69, came to Alabama (Mobile on August 21) it was the largest attended political rally for any presidential candidate of either party in the nation to this point in the election cycle at 30,000+ people. Only Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I) running for the Democrat nomination has come close with an estimated 20,000+ at a rally in Portland, Oregon.
The Alabama State Director for the Trump Campaign, Chess Bedsole, told the Alabama Political Reporter, “No one can get into the event unless they have tickets? I don’t want anyone thinking they can just walk in. Tickets can be gotten, free of charge, by going to EventBrite.com, while they last. Also, doors open at 9.”
Breitbart News reported that in a Tennessee campaign stop recently, Trump attacked President Obama and Democratic frontrunner Clinton for their “weak” foreign policy: “A lot of bad things have been happening over the last little while. But it’s gone on and on. And weakness has shown that when you’re weak and ineffective, bad stuff does happen. You know that. That’s what we’re seeing…I just left a certain little thing where I was watching our president talking. Boy, he does not get it. He doesn’t get it….You hear the term ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ He [President Obama] won’t say it. He won’t say it. And you can’t solve a problem if you refuse to talk about what the problem is. He won’t talk about it. I don’t know what’s going on with this man. You know who else won’t talk about it. Hillary, she won’t talk about it.”
Trump said, “Normally I come up and talk about trade and how China is killing us. And they are. And I talk about how Japan and how Mexico and how everybody is just absolutely eating our lunch. Today, I’m going to be talking about something else. It’s like survival.”
Trump said, “You’re talking about sneaky dirty underhanded people that want to kill our civilians, they want to go after our civilians, they want to kill – not only our civilians, all over the world — and its gonna be stopped. It’s gonna be stopped. Somebody criticized me the other day. They asked me what I’d do and I said I’m going to bomb the s**t out of them…They’ve gotta be stopped. And they should have been stopped a long time ago.”
The New York City billionaire said, “We have a president, with all of the problems, and you probably heard that at least one and probably more of the killers, the animals, that did what they did in Paris came out of the migration. So we have a president, that wants to take hundreds of thousands –hundreds and thousands of people and move them into our country. And we don’t even know who they are. There’s no paper work. There’s no anything. And all you have to do is look at the website for Obamacare to know that we’re never going to figure it out. We have no documentation on these people. And I said, a couple of weeks ago, you probably saw, I’m looking at this migration and it’s a terrible thing. I have a big heart, I have a tremendous heart, I want to take care of people. But you look at this migration … they seem like so many men. They’re so strong. They’re strong looking guys. So I said why aren’t they back fighting for their country? Then I say, ‘Is this a Trojan Horse?’”
For more information on meeting the candidates, please contact the Office of the Secretary of State at 334-242-7200.
The SEC Primary, which includes Alabama, will be held on March 1, 2016.
Trump will be at the Birmingham–Jefferson Convention Complex; 2100 Richard Arrington Jr Blvd N, Birmingham, AL, at 11:00 a.m.
Senator Marco Rubio is scheduled to appear in Guntersville and Birmingham on December 1.
Dr. Ben Carson is scheduled to appear at the University of South Alabama on Thursday, November 19.
For more information on meeting the candidates, please contact the Office of the Secretary of State at 334-242-7200.
