Gaetz, Greene start tour of America
The two House Republicans launched their 'America First' tour in The Villages, Florida, to an overflow crowd and protesters outside.
Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., launched their "America First" tour on May 7, 2021, at the Brownwood Hotel & Spa in The Villages, Florida, The Hill and Villages-News.com reported, drawing an overflow crowd that filled the 300-person venue and spilled into a line that wrapped around the building outside.
Gaetz had said in April, announcing the tour, that its goal was to "rally the 74 million Americans that voted for President Trump in the last election and highlight the destructive failings of the radical left and their puppet in the White House, Joe Biden," according to The Hill's reporting.
Inside the room
Villages-News.com reported the crowd, dressed largely in red, white and blue, did the wave and sang along to Queen's "We Are the Champions" before the two lawmakers spoke. Greene opened by asking the crowd, "Tell me, who is your president?" — to which attendees replied, "Trump," per the outlet's account. Gaetz, addressing scrutiny he was facing at the time, told the crowd, "She has lost her committees. I might lose mine. But we have a power they cannot take away."
Protesters outside
Villages-News.com reported that a large group of protesters gathered alongside supporters outside the venue, with Gaetz estimating the crowd that could not fit inside at 1,000 people. Time magazine's coverage of the same event captured two of those protesters by name: Bud Hurley, 75, who called the crowd inside "the very lunatic fringe" and questioned how such a group could lead the country, and Martha Geisler, 57, who described Greene as "an extremist" and characterized the rally-goers as "living in a fantasy world," adding that her own party "has moved so far right."
Gaetz's message from the stage
Time reported that Gaetz told the crowd Trump remained "the undisputed leader of the Republican Party" and cast the tour itself as defiance: "We send a strong message to the weak establishment in both parties. America First isn't going away, we're going on tour!" He also framed the scrutiny he and Greene faced in personal terms, telling the crowd, "They don't come for the meek, they come for the fighters," according to Time's account. One attendee, 68-year-old Eddie Johnson, told Time he backed the two lawmakers because "they're the only ones telling the truth about what's happening ... as Trump used to do it."
What it signals
The Brownwood kickoff set the template Gaetz and Greene would repeat at later stops: a Trump-rally format — music, call-and-response, defiance framed around Gaetz's ongoing controversies — deployed by two rank-and-file House members rather than a presidential campaign. That the tour opened in a reliably Republican retirement community with an overflow crowd, even as Gaetz faced public scrutiny, underscored how much of the party's grassroots energy remained organized around Trump's brand of politics rather than around traditional legislative priorities. The protesters' presence, and their own description of a Republican Party that had "moved so far right," showed the split was not just between parties but within one, playing out in the same parking lot as the rally itself.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by The Hill, Villages-News.com and Time magazine. It restores a story originally published on this site in May 2021; figures are as reported at the time.