‘We can’t allow Biden to win.’ In Miami, rallies focus on overturning presidential election
As Congress met in Washington to formally certify the 2020 election results, groups of people rallied across Miami-Dade on Wednesday in support of President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.
At gatherings near the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami and in front of the Versailles restaurant in Little Havana, flag-waving protesters falsely alleged that the presidential election was stolen from Trump. Many lamented not having traveled to the U.S. Capitol, which was under siege later Wednesday afternoon as mobs stormed the building, triggering a lockdown and a showdown with police.
Among the chief preoccupations of Miami protesters on Wednesday was finding out whether prominent Florida Republicans — including Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, as well as Rep.-elect Maria Elvira Salazar and Rep. Carlos Gimenez — would join a group of GOP lawmakers in a plan to challenge the certification of Biden’s victory.
As of Wednesday afternoon, only Scott had indicated that he would “likely” take part in that challenge, raising specific objections to certifying the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania.
“Marco Rubio is a traitor,” said Arce Gomez, a Cuban-American protester, in response to the state’s senior senator’s refusal to commit to the certification challenge. “We have to clean house.”
That sentiment of frustration — cited by many among the crowd — along with the rhetoric of the speakers who addressed the groups were indications of how a perceived lack of loyalty to Trump could emerge as an electoral threat to GOP politicians moving forward.
“We are not Republicans anymore. Those Republicans don’t represent us,” Susy Taylor yelled into a bullhorn while standing in front of Versailles.
Later, she said that “a new political party was being formed alongside our president. … Because, where is Marco Rubio? Where is Maria Elvira? We feel betrayed. We feel let down. If they don’t support the president today, they are done for in Miami. They will never be reelected.”
PROTESTERS RAISE SPECTER OF MILITARY INTERVENTION
At around 1 p.m., protesters assembled by Versailles cheered loudly as hundreds of cars decked out in Trump signs and flags honked their horns and made their way down Southwest Eighth Street. The “Trump Victory Caravan” had come from Doral, and was organized by the group Cubans4Trump.
Cubans4Trump’s co-founder Ariel Martinez said he hopes lawmakers “vote against certifying the election results.” Should that effort — which is widely seen as unlikely to overturn the results of the race — fail to pass, Martinez wants “Trump to implement martial law in states where there are disputes, and then do a new election supervised by the military.”
Martinez’s viewpoint notwithstanding, no election result is under legitimate dispute. Every U.S. state has already certified its election results after verifying their accuracy. Courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, have rejected dozens of Trump lawsuits to alter the results.
But even so, all the protesters the Herald spoke with were convinced the election was fraudulent, and many followed Martinez’s lead in bringing up military action as an avenue to help Trump stay in power.
“The military is the only hope we have left,” said Lidia Calzado, a Cuban immigrant who moved to Miami in 1994. Fellow Cuban Tere Chao agreed.
“We can’t allow Biden to win the election,” she said. “If that happens, I believe Trump should … [stay in] power by force.”
Earlier this week, former Hialeah mayor Julio Martinez, who spoke in Wednesday’s protests, had taken to La Poderosa 670 AM, a popular Spanish-language radio station in Miami, to say that “if the communists get in and I’m talking about Joe Biden because I consider him communist ... there will be a civil war here.”
Ariel Martinez, from Cubans4Trump, had also bordered on violence incitement on Saturday, as he urged a group of Trump supporters huddled in front of Rubio’s West Miami home to take active stances in support of President Trump’s refusal to accept his election defeat.
“Sometimes we gotta be pacifists but sometimes we gotta get s--- done.”
Small, scattered protests continued throughout the evening. At La Carreta in west Miami-Dade, several dozen Trump supporters gathered to extol the president and trumpet inaccurate claims of electoral fraud sourced to YouTube videos and alternative news sources. Since the election, the Cuban eatery on Bird Road has served as a backdrop for pro-Trump crowds waving flags and blasting music, drawing honks from passers-by.
Miami Beach’s Ernesto Echevarria, 32, said he was convinced the mobs were bad apples, agitators from liberal groups or some mixture of both.
“Those are not Trump people,” he said. “True Trump supporters are peaceful.”
Miami Herald Staff Writer Joey Flechas contributed to this story.
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 4:19 PM.
