The Arizona Republic reports that “The Donald” will be holding a fundraiser at the former home of the late Senator Barry Goldwater Trump fundraiser to be held at Goldwater home:
An exclusive fundraiser featuring presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will take place at the landmark former home of Barry Goldwater, the five-term conservative U.S. senator from Arizona who clinched the GOP nomination for the presidency in 1964 over more moderate rivals.
Goldwater, who died in 1998 at the age of 89, built the ranch-style home in Paradise Valley in 1957. He named the house ”Be-nun-i-kin,” which is Navajo for ”house on top of a hill.” On Jan. 3, 1964, Goldwater officially announced his presidential intentions from the patio of the residence. He would lose to President Lyndon Johnson in a historic landslide.
Bob and Karen Hobbs, business and civic leaders who campaigned for Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, paid $4.1 million for the property in 2000.
The location of the 2 p.m. Saturday Trump fundraiser was confirmed by someone who received an invitation and will be attending the event.
I’m guessing that Barry Goldwater’s widow, Susan Goldwater Levine, will not be in attendance. Barry Goldwater ‘would be appalled’ by Trump raising money in his home, his widow says:
[O]ne important person is queasy about Trump’s plans to campaign in the late Arizona senator’s landmark estate in Paradise Valley: Goldwater’s widow.
“Ugh or yuck is my response,” Susan Goldwater Levine said Thursday night when called by a reporter. “I think Barry would be appalled that his home was being used for that purpose. Barry would be appalled by Mr. Trump’s behavior — the unintelligent and unfiltered and crude communications style. And he’s shallow — so, so shallow.”
[The Goldwater] family sold the home to Robert and Karen Hobbs, area business and civic leaders.
Reached Thursday night, Robert Hobbs said the Trump campaign asked him if he would host the fundraiser at the old Goldwater home. He said he does not know Trump but agreed to host the event out of loyalty to the Republican Party.
“Barry was a good, solid Republican and was conservative,” Hobbs said. “I’m not sure that Donald Trump is conservative, but he’s who our nominee is.”
Asked to respond to Levine’s criticisms, Hobbs suggested that her opinion was less important because she was Goldwater’s second wife. Goldwater remarried after his first wife, Margaret, passed away.
“She was his second wife; she’s not his first wife,” Hobbs said. “So she came along later in life…. She’s entitled to her opinion, but Barry was a Republican and Donald Trump’s a Republican, and we’re going to support whoever the Republican nominee is.”
Oooh, you’re just a nasty SOB, aren’t you Mr. Hobbs. Second wives don’t count? Tell that to Cindy McCain. And since you knew Barry, you know that if he were still with us he would kick your ass for so rudely insulting his wife.
Levine said she finds Trump’s candidacy “crazy and inappropriate” and a striking contrast to the political career of her late husband, whom she said acted in public life as “a genuine humanist and a straight-talking but fair-thinking gentleman.”
“I can’t believe we are doing this as a country,” she said of Trump’s candidacy. “Barry was so true to his convictions and would never be issuing these shallow, crude, accusatory criticisms of the other party or the other person.”
Asked what the late senator would think of Trump as the Republican Party’s nominee, Levine said: “Barry would be appalled and ashamed. He held the office in high regard.”
She added, “No matter how he was feeling, he would conduct himself with dignity and pride — because as the candidate or as the president, it’s required.”
This is not the first time Levine — or other members of the Goldwater family — have spoken out against Trump. In March, Barry Goldwater Jr., the senator’s son who grew up to enter the family business and become a Republican congressman from California, called Trump “an authoritarian” and “a cowboy.”
“I don’t think there’s any comparison at all with Barry Goldwater,” he told MSNBC’s Tony Dokoupil. “Donald Trump is an authoritarian. Barry Goldwater had principles, and he was a gentleman. Donald Trump is a cowboy.”