The pro-Trump owner of a beachside property on Florida’s Emerald Coast could be slapped with a fine of $50 a day for the massive “Trump Won” banner he has draped across his three-tiered balcony.
Martin Peavy is a Georgia-based real estate agent who lives four days a week in Seagrove, Florida, one of the several quaint and idyllic Gulf Coast towns along County Road 30A that many Southerners cherish as the ultimate destination for quiet, old-time beach getaways and luxury homes.
However, the picturesque scenes that 30A has to offer are subject to Walton County regulations, which Peavy was found to have violated with his three-story political statement.
His massive banner indicates that he believes former President Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election, which many in the “Make America Great Again” movement, including Trump himself, have long insisted was stolen in favor of now-President Joe Biden.
The Pensacola News Journal reported that unless Peavy takes down the sign, he’s facing steep fines of $50 daily.
That is, fines that would be steep to the sort of people who could never dream of owning property along 30A.
To Peavy, on the other hand, $50 a day is chump change. Elections records show he donated over $9,000 to pro-Trump and Republican organizations in the 2020 election season, and he told the News Journal that he’s helping conservative former football star Herschel Walker’s GOP campaign for U.S. Senate.
“Fifty dollars a day ain’t a d*** thing to me,” he told the newspaper. “I’m not going to take it down.”
Even if Peavy, who says he hung the banner to trigger the local liberals and “1% leftists” in the luxury community, couldn’t afford to pay the fine, he has plenty of support.
“I’ve already had people call me and tell me they’d pay the $50 fines,” he said.
A resident of Walton County's beachside Road 30A corridor says he's not going to take a large 'Trump Won' banner off of his Seagrove Beach house. https://t.co/mUVfXbpdBL
— PNJ (@pnj) October 22, 2021
Peavy initially attracted the ire of the county after keeping his “Trump 2020” sign up well after the Nov. 3 election, which violated a county code mandating that campaign signage must be taken down 15 days after an election.
You see, like many Americans, Peavy did not feel the election was over in early January when he was first contacted by the county.
“I said, ‘The election is not over,’” he said he told the county.
“Our elections have been rigged for at least 20 years. That’s proven facts,” Peavy told the News Journal.
He finally removed his sign on Jan. 21, the day after Biden was sworn into office, but just two months later, he unfurled the “Trump Won” banner.
Peavy was first contacted about the new sign in June, and a brief code enforcement hearing was held last week, at which neither Peavy nor his attorney was present.
It probably wouldn’t have made much difference — Peavy now says that he also has plans to hang a “Let’s Go Brandon” sign on his house next. The phrase has become a euphemism for “F*** Joe Biden” after a reporter mistakenly took the vulgar chant to be a cheer of encouragement for NASCAR driver Brandon Brown earlier this month.
The Trump supporter also cheekily suggested that there’s nothing political about the slogan “Trump Won,” as, after all, the former president is fond of saying he has won many golf tournaments.
Meanwhile, he added, it “doesn’t say Donald Trump, it just says Trump. How many Trumps do you know?”
Either way, Peavy feels his right to free expression is being violated.
“I’m going to sue the county because they’re stepping into my First Amendment rights,” he said.
That’s the MAGA spirit that millions of Americans have grown to know, love and identify strongly with — and it’s also highly emblematic of our lightning rod former president himself.
Trump may be out of office, but much to the chagrin of “1% leftists” and everyone else who has spent the last nearly six years so severely triggered by his existence on the political scene, it’s safe to say that the flame he ignited in the hearts of his supporters has been far from quenched by the outcome of the previous election.
They’re the type of people that, like Peavy, hardly let a small thing like arbitrary county codes stop them from plainly stating opinions that are considered to be a veritable thought crime by establishment narratives.
In Peavy’s case, if it’s a fine the county wants, it’s a fine the county will get — and his massive triggering statement isn’t going anywhere.
Via The Western Journal.