West Palm Beach braces for election night with Trump at center stage

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Barricades went up around the Palm Beach County Convention Center Monday amid heightened security measures in anticipation of former President Donald Trump’s election night watch party.
Thousands of supporters, donors and others are expected to descend on the coastal city Tuesday for the event — which could go late into the night — just a few miles north of Mar-A-Lago. Watch parties in 2022 and Super Tuesday took place at Trump’s posh Palm Beach club.
This election marks the first time Trump will watch presidential election returns in Florida. In 2016, he celebrated his unexpected win over Hillary Clinton in New York. In 2020, Trump watched Joe Biden end his bid for a second term in Washington, D.C.
Polls show a tight race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris nationally and in the seven battleground states that will decide the election.
After casting his vote Tuesday morning in Palm Beach, Trum told reporters he is “very confident” he will win back the White House, adding “I hear we are doing well everywhere,” per CNN’s Michelle Shen. He also complained about the time it might take to call the race. “It won’t even be close,” Trump said. “But it’s gonna take a long time to certify.”
“I’m keenly aware that the eyes of the world will be focused on West Palm Beach this week, particularly election night, because of the decision of the former president to hold an election night event here,” West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James told reporters at a Sunday press conference. “We want our residents and visitors of our city to know they are safe at West Palm Beach.”
Trump is holding a separate event at Mar-A-Lago and is expected to arrive at the convention center around 10 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, per CBS News. But CNN has reported that Trump might not make an appearance at the convention center.
Security around the resort was tight Tuesday where Trump is holding a private party. Local law enforcement temporarily blocked streets for a police motorcycle-led motorcade to pass through in the afternoon. Trump supporters waving large Trump flags lined the road as it passed.
On Monday, crews erected eight-foot tall metal barriers around the downtown West Palm Beach convention venue. Local police are working with the Secret Service and Homeland Security to safeguard the area, which is expected to draw both Trump supporters and detractors.
“We’re going to bring a couple of correctional buses down there, which is a nice name for jail. So at the slightest inclination that things are getting ready to heat up and get out of hand, we’re going to stop it real early and you’ll come spend the night with me,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters at a Sunday press conference.
Trump made his final pitch to voters Monday at rallies in Raleigh, North Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a key swing state that could very well decide the election, and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“We do not have to live this way. We do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay,” he told people in Pittsburgh.
The former president, the target of two apparent assassination attempts, also amped up violent rhetoric in the closing days of the campaign
In Phoenix last week, he said that former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney wouldn’t be a “war hawk” if “guns are trained on her face.” Speaking behind bulletproof glass Sunday in Lititz Pennsylvania, Trump said that for a bullet to hit him in an attempted assassination, a shooter would have to “shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much.”
Trump has also continued to claim that the only way he can lose is because of election fraud.
West Palm Beach voters Tuesday were lined up Tuesday morning in a blustery wind outside the Howard Park Community Center, just a few blocks from the convention center.
Dana Little said he has no idea what will happen tonight but expressed concern about the possibility of violence
“Just hoping that cooler heads prevail no matter which way it goes,” he said. “We’ve been here before and it wasn’t pretty.”
Little, who voted for Harris, said he suspects the outcome won’t be known for a couple of days. “I don’t know,” he said. “But clearly the city is prepared and so is the sheriff’s office.”
Sandra Granza held a campaign sign for a county judge in the community center parking lot patrolled by a security guard just outside the 150-foot no solicitation zone. She, too, expressed concern about possible violence.
“I think it’s going to be a very, very tight, very, very close race and just I hope there’s no violence,” she said. Americans have to worry about that possibility around elections “because people have changed. They don’t have the freedom to express their thoughts anymore without being judged, and it is sad.”
Granza, who voted for Trump, said people have a “horrible” reaction when she tells them she’s a Republican. “I said I do not judge for your religion or what you believe,” she said. “Why do you react this way?”
While some “people are so silent in voicing their choice, I’m not,” Granza said. “I let my family know. Fortunately, it’s not something we discuss at the table because people get upset.”