by Tim Gilmore, 8/20/2016
I thought I’d finished my Riverside Apocalypse Series on the Park Street Trump Office with Update #4, the tone of which hopefully reflects the mysteries left eddying in the dust by the office’s speedy and overnight disappearance.
But sources who must remain anonymous reached out to me this morning and shed light on the truth. This morning’s discussions involved Cloak-and-Dagger / Woodward-and-Bernstein-style secret meetings at undisclosed locations with incognito apparatchiks who spoke only in heavily coded samizdat.
Also, there was a Florida Times-Union story yesterday.
Nevertheless, a disgruntled volunteer and an anonymous source close to the workings of the Trump office did offer details the T-U story did not.
Trump’s Florida Campaign had invited Patsy Butts, the 80-year-old beret-wearing chain-smoking owner of the commercial building at Park and King Streets, where she’d volunteered prime storefront space for her Trump Shrine, to attend the blathering narcissist’s Jacksonville rally in early August as a VIP.
The very next day, she received an urgent phone call. The office was being robbed. Burglars were taking the televisions, the phones, the chairs and tables, the assorted Trumpaganda.
Then Butts received another call, this time from a woman who claimed she was with the official Florida Trump campaign, but refused to identify herself. She told Butts that her donation of the rental space was a violation of the limits an individual could contribute to a candidate. According to Butts, the woman “berated” her, and when Butts apparently lost her cool, even threatened to have her thrown in jail or a psychiatric ward.
Though the caller refused to identify herself, Butts says she traced the call back to the office of Susie Wiles, former Chief of Staff to Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney and now co-chair for Trump Florida. Wiles denies speaking to Butts.
Butts feels that Trump Florida exploited her connections and enthusiasm for the Trump rally, and then, when they were done with her, shut down her unofficial office.
Seven months ago, in the face of neighborhood protest against the Riverside office, Butts promised to keep it there through the presidential campaign.
Now Butts is apparently so angry at the Trump Florida campaign that she’s been ranting to friends that she might not be able to vote for the man after all.
