President Donald Trump made a fundraising stop in the Bay Area this month, his first visit to the region since being inaugurated in 2017.
Trump arrived at Moffett Field and went in a motorcade to a re-election fundraiser luncheon at a home in Portola Valley that had tickets going for as much as $100,000.
Protesters with activist groups like the Backbone Campaign and the Raging Grannies gathered alongside Alpine Road in Portola Valley sporting large inflated balloon versions of Trump depicting him as a chicken and a baby. Some also handed out stickers calling for his impeachment.
“We don’t want Trump in our town,” said Ruth Robertson, a Palo Alto resident and part of the Raging Grannies group.
Toni Norton, a Santa Cruz resident, was also among the protesters and said she feared for the future for her grandchildren, calling Trump a “wannabe dictator.”
Trump’s press secretary Stephanie Grisham said of the Portola Valley fundraiser that Trump “participated in a roundtable with approximately 25 supporters, then moved to a larger area and spoke to a couple of hundred supporters about the many accomplishments of his administration,” according to pool reports.
It was a brief visit to the Bay Area, with the luncheon being Trump’s only stop before departing for Southern California. He boarded Air Force One back at Moffett Field shortly before 3 p.m. on the way to another fundraiser that evening in Beverly Hills, according to pool reports.
