President Donald Trump has left the Bay Area on Tuesday afternoon after making his first visit to the region since being inaugurated in 2017.
Trump arrived earlier in the day at Moffett Field and went in a motorcade to a re-election fundraiser luncheon at a home in Portola Valley that had tickets going for as much as $100,000.
Protesters with activist groups like the Backbone Campaign and the Raging Grannies gathered alongside Alpine Road in Portola Valley sporting large inflated balloon versions of Trump depicting him as a chicken and a baby. Some also handed out stickers calling for his impeachment.
“We don’t want Trump in our town,” said Ruth Robertson, a Palo Alto resident and part of the Raging Grannies group.
Toni Norton, a Santa Cruz resident, was also among the protesters and said she feared for the future for her grandchildren, calling Trump a “wannabe dictator.”
Trump’s press secretary Stephanie Grisham said of the Portola Valley fundraiser that Trump “participated in a roundtable with approximately 25 supporters, then moved to a larger area and spoke to a couple of hundred supporters about the many accomplishments of his Administration,” according to pool reports.
It was a brief visit to the Bay Area, with the luncheon being Trump’s only stop before departing for Southern California. He boarded Air Force One back at Moffett Field shortly before 3 p.m. and is headed to another fundraiser Tuesday evening in Beverly Hills, according to pool reports.
