It’s a common theme for Democratic candidates to hate on Donald Trump, but Jeff Greene is probably the only candidate in Florida who’s had the opportunity to go head-to-head with the president.
Greene, a billionaire who lives two doors down from Trump’s Florida home, marked his entry into the crowded Democratic gubernatorial field this week with two ads, including one that features a grainy clip of a confrontation between the two Palm Beachers.
The clash occurred in the dining room at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort about a month after the president was elected, according to Greene.
Greene, who’s a member of the swank club, told reporters he was celebrating a friend’s birthday a few tables away from the president-elect when “he just called out to me and started attacking me.”
“I don’t know if you know how the president sometimes works. When Donald Trump, he points at you and says, ‘Jeff Greene.’ He was going at me pretty aggressively,” said Greene, who filed paperwork Wednesday to qualify for the governor’s race while accompanied by his wife, Mei Sze Chan, and three young sons.
Greene’s wife captured the encounter with Trump on her phone, “just to see how aggressive it was,” the candidate said.
“He was clearly unhinged and very upset at the fact that I had come out very big for Hillary (Clinton) on the air a number of times and also to local newspapers and against him,” Greene added.
Despite being neighbors on the close-knit enclave of Palm Beach, the two men aren’t buds, Greene said.
“I’ve never had lunch or dinner with him. I mean, I’ve seen him around because he’s in Palm Beach, but I can’t say that I’m his friend. He’s never been to my home,” he said.
Greene also said he isn’t dropping his membership at what Trump’s dubbed the “Winter White House” because “it gives me an opportunity to go in there and do exactly what I did after he became president-elect and stand up to him.”
Greene said he wished Trump would be in town this weekend, so he could butt heads with him over the separation of undocumented immigrant children from their families at the country’s southern border, which Greene --- whose sons are ages 4, 6 and 8 --- called child abuse.
Even though Trump said Wednesday he was putting an end to the practice, Greene said “you don’t reverse the consequences of separating a young child from his or her mother.”
The children and parents will be affected by the separation for the rest of their lives, Greene said.
“We’re better than that as a country. So I wish I could have the opportunity, that he was coming to Florida tonight and I could go in and walk right up to him and let him know how I feel,” he said.
CHILDREN IN MIDDLE OF POLITICAL SNIPING
While Trump said he was halting the practice of separating children from their families at the border, that didn’t stop politicians from continuing to play the blame game.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott, a Trump ally who’s trying to oust the veteran Democratic senator, are pointing the finger at each other over the explosive issue, even though they both agreed it needed to end.
Nelson this week garnered national headlines after he was denied entry to a Homestead detention center where he said 94 children were being housed after being taken away from their parents.
Scott, as governor, demanded more information from the Trump administration on the children detained in Homestead and elsewhere in Florida, while Scott, the candidate, blasted “career politician” Nelson for remaining “silent” regarding other shelters for unaccompanied minors that were opened in Florida by President Barack Obama’s administration.
Scott’s camp also faulted Nelson for not knowing about the Homestead facility five months after Florida congressional offices were notified that it was being reopened.
“The chaos at the border is a direct result of career politicians like Nelson who for years have failed to take action on this federal responsibility because they are just talkers, not doers,” Scott’s campaign spokeswoman Lauren Schenone said in a statement Wednesday.
That drew a heated response from Nelson’s campaign spokeswoman, who said the Democrat is “fighting to pass legislation that would keep children with their parents.”
“Rick Scott’s hollow words highlight the fact he’s done nothing to stand up to or demand action from his good friend, Donald Trump, and his immoral, inhumane policy as hundreds of kids are being held in facilities across Florida,” Nelson spokeswoman Carlie Waibel said in a statement.
DEMOCRATS HOPE HEALTH CARE WILL BE POLITICAL ELIXIR
One of the more-dramatic moments of Scott’s time in office came in 2013 when he held a late-afternoon press conference at the governor’s mansion to declare his support for Medicaid expansion.
The prospect of Scott supporting a key element of Obama’s health-care overhaul was at one time unthinkable. Scott, a former health-care executive, had been a leading critic of “Obamacare” even before he started his first campaign for governor.
But the Republican governor would eventually flip again on the issue and declare his opposition to Medicaid expansion when it was proposed by the Florida Senate. The opposition of Scott and the GOP-dominated House forced the Senate to scrap the idea.
Now, Democrats eager to reclaim the governor’s mansion and defeat Scott in his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat have decided that Medicaid and health care are issues to run on.
Gwen Graham, who is among the Democratic candidates running for governor, launched a television ad this week that calls it “disgusting” and “an absolute failure of the Republican Legislature” that Medicaid expansion was rejected.
Down in West Palm Beach, Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo held a press conference with U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel and others to hammer home the need for Medicaid expansion. Democrats say they plan to hold similar events in the coming weeks.
It’s not yet clear, however, if Medicaid expansion will have a major impact on the elections in a year when issues such as immigration and Trump are dominating the political landscape. Democrat Charlie Crist, who challenged Scott in 2014, tried to make Medicaid expansion a major part of his campaign platform that year and lost.
Frankel, a West Palm Beach Democrat, maintained that health care is on the minds of voters and that Democrats want to remind them that Republicans have said “no, no, no.”
“If you believe in health care as a basic right and that regardless of your income you should be able go to a doctor and get medicine if you need it, then you have to vote Democrat,” Frankel said.
Meanwhile, the left-leaning group Floridians for a Fair Shake this week released a television ad that features twin sisters Susan Stutz of Port St. Lucie and Paula Albright of Palm City talking about surviving cancer. The ad goes after Republican Congressman Brian Mast on health-care issues and is expected to run in the West Palm Beach-Fort Pierce media market --- as Democrats target Mast’s seat in that area.
TWEET OF THE WEEK: “As they say at the Capitol, ‘It’s a light day on Plaza.’ ” --- Florida Politics reporter Jim Rosica (@JimRosicaFL) after the governor’s office released a schedule Wednesday for Gov. Rick Scott and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera that listed only “staff and call time.” The governor’s office is on the plaza level of the Capitol.
