The Congressman from Virginia's 5th Congressional District was booted from a store and reportedly harassed while greeting visitors outside.
Why was sitting Congressman Bob Good kicked out of a public grand opening of a Trump store? As we break the situation down, let's examine the surrounding context. On Saturday, Feb. 17th, John McGuire (VA-SD10), a state senator who announced his campaign for Congress a week after being elected to the Virginia senate, put out these Facebook posts:
McGuire is running for Virginia's 5th Congressional District against incumbent Congressman Bob Good. As you see in those posts above, McGuire sent out the invitation to the Trump store to everyone who saw the post, not a specific sect of individuals. Now, the Trump Store was not started by the McGuire campaign, nor funded - at least publicly - by the campaign meaning they had no authority to keep anyone out. The store was started by now former Appomattox Republican Committee chairwoman, Karen Angulo. Angulo, despite it being not-well-looked upon most of the time for a chairman of a local Republican party to publicly endorse or be heavily involved in one individual's campaign during a hotly-disputed contest, has made it known that she is supporting McGuire's campaign, and reportedly "invited" Sen. McGuire to the event as a "special guest". It has been claimed by some that the Trump Store was merely a guise to get voters to a location where McGuire was in order to collect signatures to get on the ballot, as his campaign has been off to a slow start. With all this in mind, the main headline is that Congressman Good was kicked out of the event by the owner of the store, the aforementioned Angulo. Rather than attempt to explain the exact details of the event, I will let this report from Breitbart relate the information, and then correct what they (perhaps willingly) have wrong:
"Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) was ousted from a pro-Trump event by MAGA patriots, video shows.
Video shows Good, the House Freedom Caucus Chairman, who endorsed former Trump challenger Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary race last year, getting kicked out of a pro-Trump event by the owner of the store. The former Appomattox, Virginia, GOP Chair and proprietor of the Trump store explained in a statement that they “recently rented a storefront to serve as the Trump store in Farmville, VA” as a show of support for the former president. Saturday served as the grand opening, and they invited State Senator John McGuire as a special guest “because John has been a supporter of President Trump and never wavered, unlike Bob Good.”
According to the store owner, Good was told the night before that he was not welcomed to the event, but he showed up uninvited and had a back and forth with the store owner. According to the statement from the owner, Good “attempted to make the day about himself, instead of President Trump.” “I repeatedly asked Bob to leave. Once he finally relented and left our store, Bob and his paid campaign staff stood out front for over four hours trying to block people from entering our store. The whole thing was very embarrassing behavior for anyone, let alone a sitting member of congress,” the statement reads.
Indeed, video shows the congressman arguing with the owner of the store, who repeatedly asked him to leave, telling him that he did not have an invitation to “hijack” the store.
“Bob, seriously stop this. This is embarrassing, Bob,” she said, adding, “What you did in the text that you sent out, you made it sound like this was your event.”
“You put President Trump’s image on your text, and you said that everyone was invited – you send it out to your big list, and then you actually wanted donations for it,” she told Good.
“This is not the fifth district. This is my private shop. And you all are trespassing, so please leave” she said adding that Good was trying to “hijack” her store for his own campaigning. “Bob is not a supporter of President Trump. I was disappointed to learn that Bob endorsed against President Trump this year and supported everyone except Trump in the 2016 primary. While Bob has a right to support any candidate he wants, he should have the courage of his convictions and not try to say that he is a Trump supporter,” the store owner continued in a statement, explaining that “Bob and his consultants are targeting county GOP chairman that support President Trump.”
The statement continued:
They removed me as Appomattox chairman on Saturday night and are threatening to remove the Buckingham Chair for her support of President Trump and other MAGA candidates. Bob and his staff are undermining the will of local committee members for Bob’s benefit and it is wrong.It greatly saddens me to have a congressman like Bob Good that does not support President Trump or the MAGA movement. Now more than ever I am working exclusively to get President Trump back in the White House and other America First candidates into office."
And that's the report from Breitbart. Before we break down the lies in the article, here is what video we have of the event:
Alright, now let's break down the Breitbart article:
Right off the bat you find that this is hardly a thorough or well-researched article. Not only does the piece consist almost entirely of the statement of one woman who was on one side of the incident and inherently has a ton of bias and every motivation to twist the facts, Breitbart seemingly makes no attempt to check and see if her claims are true.
Headline: "MAGA Patriots". Kicking the sitting Congressman who coincidently is likely the most conservative Congressman in the entire country certainly doesn't reek of patriotism, does it?
Claim: "According to the store owner, Good was told the night before that he was not welcomed to the event, but he showed up uninvited and had a back and forth with the store owner."
Fact-check: Congressman Good proceeded - as seen in the video - to read Ms Angulo (the woman from the article) an excerpt from this text sent out by the McGuire campaign:
This event was advertised as public, and Congressman Good attended it much like McGuire in order to reach out to potential 5th district supporters.
Claim: "According to the statement from the owner, Good “attempted to make the day about himself, instead of President Trump.”
Fact check: Sen. McGuire was there and campaigning as well, asking people for signatures and hoping to get them to vote for him. Congressman Good was doing nothing that Sen. McGuire wasn't already doing. If anyone was trying to "make the day about himself", it was McGuire.
Claim: "“I (Angulo) repeatedly asked Bob to leave. Once he finally relented and left our store, Bob and his paid campaign staff stood out front for over four hours trying to block people from entering our store. The whole thing was very embarrassing behavior for anyone, let alone a sitting member of congress,” the statement reads."
Fact check: 1. The brief discussion took approximately three minutes as Congressman Good attempted to understand why he was not allowed in the store before he "finally relented and left". 2. This author knows for a fact, as he has personal connections with several people there, that some, if not most of the people there, were not paid staff, but rather volunteers. 3. Not a single person was prevented from entering the Trump store. As he was not allowed inside, Congressman Good greeted voters outside the store as they came, and never forcibly attempted to keep anyone out. 4. The behavior was rather embarrassing for a sitting GOP chairwoman, and not a good look for the local party.
Claim: "“Bob is not a supporter of President Trump. I was disappointed to learn that Bob endorsed against President Trump this year and supported everyone except Trump in the 2016 primary."
Fact-check: 1. Congressman Good publicly endorsed President Trump, as soon as Ron DeSantis, his preferred candidate, dropped out of the race. 2. Ms Angulo has no basis for or proof for claiming that Congressman Good supported everyone in 2016 except Trump.
Claim: "They removed me (Angulo) as Appomattox chairman on Saturday night and are threatening to remove the Buckingham Chair for her support of President Trump and other MAGA candidates. Bob and his staff are undermining the will of local committee members for Bob’s benefit and it is wrong."
Fact check: Angulo resigned her position as Appomattox GOP Chairman almost immediately following the event and very soon after learning that she had a last-second, unexpected challenger to the chairmanship, Robin Wolfskill, a local conservative who supports Congressman Good. Normally, a mass meeting would be held for the local party to vote on their candidates, meaning no one was forcing Angulo to voluntarily leave her seat. However, once she learned of this challenge, she angrily sent around an email letting her fellow committee members know that she was resigning effective immediately. On top of this, none of Congressman Good's staff has any power to "undermine the will of local committee members" or remove Ms Angulo. She did that herself.
Though the McGuire campaign is not publicly affiliated with Ms Angulo, she has effectively endorsed him and was possibly hoping for an incident like this to occur in order to increase awareness of McGuire's campaign and paint the Congressman in a bad light. Whether or not that tactic will have any effect on the June 18th primary voters remains to be seen.
This story will be updated as important details unfold
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