‘What’s a more secure place than The Villages?’: Trump finds his people again in Florida
THE VILLAGES, Florida — Facing tumults both on the political and international fronts, President Donald Trump took his economic message to his home state Friday.
The reception, to put it mildly, was raucously enthusiastic.
The event was ostensibly aimed at revving up seniors, a reliable voting block, ahead of the midterms. But the event also had the feel of a pep rally for the president at a time when his popularity is flagging , even in solidly-red Florida.
Here, Trump met a roaring, supportive crowd — with many still in line outside the charter school where the rally was held — as he opened his speech by raising the alleged assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner six days earlier.
“They want me to be in a secure place,” Trump said. “I said, ‘What’s a more secure place than The Villages?’”
Celebrity psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw traveled into town to join Trump onstage and gushed about how the president had “restored trust” by increasing tax deductions for seniors. And Florida gave the president a boost this week before he even set foot in the state, passing new congressional maps that could give Republicans four more seats in the House.
But that wasn’t seen as a win by everyone. About a mile outside the rally, Democratic groups protested the new maps. More broadly, Sunshine State residents report they’re struggling under the high cost of living, including on insurance and rent, and unemployment has ticked up . Though people poured into Florida from all over the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic, many are now leaving under the strain of high costs .
Yet Trump was in home territory in The Villages: He continues to be popular among Republicans in Florida . And The Villages — the largest retirement community in America with tens of thousands of residents — is a GOP voting goldmine.
“I can finally sleep,” Beth Ramsey, who lives in nearby Fruitland Park and is president of Southern Diamonds Federated Republican Women, said of Trump’s presidency. “For four years, I couldn’t sleep because I was so concerned about where we were going.”
She and other attendees interviewed at the rally agreed with Trump that the economy was doing well, and said they’d felt more squeezed by high prices under former President Joe Biden. “I think about Biden’s $5 gas,” Paul, 71, a Villages resident and Air Force veteran who declined to share his last name, said when asked what he thought of Democrats raising affordability concerns.
He called the senior tax deduction he received from Trump’s signature tax law “amazing” and conceded that while he spent more on his new home than he’d hoped, he blamed it not on Trump but on high interest rates and a flood of people who’d moved to Florida during the pandemic. Gary, 77, who’s been in Florida 13 years since moving here from Michigan, acknowledged home insurance prices in Florida were “outrageous” but said overall he found the cost of living manageable.
Several prominent Florida Republicans facing elections this fall took the stage before Trump’s arrival to hammer home similar themes. Rather than urging voters to elect them in November, they largely focused on praising the president.
Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), who is running to retain the seat GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to when Marco Rubio joined the Trump administration, told the crowd Trump had repeatedly borne the “heat, rhetoric, criticisms and attacks.”
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson blamed inflation under Biden for high prices and warned Democrats supported “raising taxes on hardworking Americans.” He thanked Trump for “fighting so hard for all of us.”
Rep. Byron Donalds , the Trump-endorsed GOP frontrunner for governor who received the loudest reception from the crowd outside of Trump, urged attendees to “keep Florida red and tell the Democrats ‘sorry, no blue wave.’”
Democrats, he warned, “have not changed” and “have the same ideas that drove up our prices.” Florida’s primary isn’t until August. But Donalds has long been the faraway frontrunner in the GOP nomination for governor, having raised $67 million following Trump’s endorsement. Trump’s backing of DeSantis in the 2018 election had a similar effect of propelling him toward winning that race.
Florida has in that time become more Republican. Still, in a sign of possible changes in the state, Emerson College polling from April shows Donalds has a single-digit edge when stacked up against former Rep. David Jolly and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, the big-name Democrats in the race. DeSantis won his reelection in 2022 by 19 points, and Trump won Florida by 13 points in 2024.
While onstage behind a banner that read “Golden Age for your Golden Years,” the president asked the crowd to cheer for their favorite part of his tax bill — with “No Tax on Social Security,” the part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that increases tax deductions for middle-income seniors by $6,000, getting the loudest applause. He also touted his efforts to lower prescription drug prices.
“Our country is hot again,” Trump said. “We have a great country again. … This is the Golden Age of America.”
But Trump also weaved in and out of other topics during his nearly two-hour speech, including mocking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for overestimating her family’s net worth, mulling over the best nickname for his predecessor and demanding presidents be forced to take a cognitive test, a topic he’d also written about on Truth Social on Thursday.
Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power predicted before the event that the president wouldn’t be doing many rallies in Florida ahead of the midterms because he didn’t see Florida as being in play for Democrats. (Trump has been returning to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach most weekends, but the club generally closes for the season around Mother’s Days as many snowbirds return to northern states during Florida’s sweltering months.)
