Club 45 USA, a group inspired by former President Donald Trump, has landed its namesake and highest-profile speaker ever.
The former president is scheduled to appear at the organization’s April 11 meeting in West Palm Beach.
Joe Budd, the club’s president, said all the tickets were gone within 45 minutes of the email going out to club members and supporters Wednesday morning. By early afternoon, he said, there were already 500 people on the waiting list.
Budd said club leaders have been in contact with Trump aides for a long time about trying to get a personal appearance. It’s likely one of the last times people will see Trump in Palm Beach County for months.
Since leaving the presidency, Trump has made his Mar-a-Lago Club his primary residence. But Mar-a-Lago generally shuts down for the season after Easter.
Club 45 gets its name from the number of Trump’s presidency, 45. The former president’s picture is incorporated in the group’s logo, along with MAGA, the “Make America Great Again” catchphrase from his 2016 campaign.
“He’s the namesake for the club. So certainly he’s our biggest guest to this point,” Budd said.
The club has grown into one of the most successful political clubs in South Florida, routinely attracting hundreds of people to its meetings.
A 2019 club meeting featuring Roger Stone attracted more than 1,000 people. At a 2018 club meeting, he said that even if indicted, “I will never roll on Donald Trump.”
He didn’t. In 2019, Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the U.S. House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign. In 2020, he was pardoned by Trump.
The club was founded in early 2018 by Budd, who is also Palm Beach County’s Republican state committeeman. He and other leaders of the organization were early supporters of Trump’s candidacy, at a time when many other Florida Republicans were supporting former Gov. Jeb Bush or U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for their party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
And even though many are active in the Republican Party, they’ve been more aligned with Trump’s ideology and approach than with the establishment Republicans who used to dominate the party.
Leaders of the Trump club were supporters of Gov. Ron DeSantis back when he was seen as the underdog candidate for the 2018 Republican nomination for governor.
With many of the founders active in Palm Beach County politics, the group used to be known as Trump Club 45 PBC, but it’s long attracted members from throughout the region, and substituted USA for the county initials in its name.
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