New Yorker<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cOnce again, it feels like the grift is happening, it feels like there\u2019s ill-gotten gain,\u201d St. Petersburg Democratic Rep. Michele Rayner said on the House floor before the vote.<\/p>\n
The Trump Organization\u2019s executive operations and communications director, Kimberly Benza, told the Times\/Herald in an email that the trademark applications were filed in order to prevent \u201cbad actors from infringing upon or misusing the name\u201d and that \u201cthe Trump Organization is, and always has been, willing to provide this right to his hometown county at no charge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Republicans pushing the proposal in the Florida Legislature also rejected allegations that the Trump family could profiteer off the name change.<\/p>\n
Palm Beach Gardens Rep. Meg Weinberger said she received a note from the \u201cTrump family\u201d that she partially read to her colleagues on the House floor Tuesday, echoing part of the statement the Trump Organization provided to the Times\/Herald. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be clear, the president and his family will not receive any royalty, licensing fee or financial consideration whatsoever from the proposed airport renaming. The airport renaming bill currently in the Florida Legislature requires a license agreement from the Trump organization,\u201d Weinberger, a Republican sponsoring the bill in the House, said.<\/p>\n
The bill, however, did not require a licensing agreement when it was initially filed. The provision was added into both the House and Senate versions of the bills as amendments within the last three weeks.<\/p>\n
The Palm Beach County Department of Airports has said it has not entered into any agreements with Trump or his affiliated companies. The department anticipates that implementing the name change will cost $5.5 million, according to public affairs manager Rebeca Krogman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Palm Beach County Department of Airports has no authority to enter into an agreement regarding the name change,\u201d Krogman said in an email. \u201cThe decision is being made at the state level.\u201d<\/p>\n
House and Senate versions of the proposals both include language referring to \u201ccommercial use of \u2018President Donald J. Trump International Airport\u2019 by Palm Beach County \u2026 at no cost, in signage, advertising, marketing, merchandising and promotions and for the branding of the airport and its operations, services, and amenities, and all related purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the bill passed the Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday, bill sponsor Sen. Debbie Mayfield, R-Melbourne, told the Times\/Herald that Trump will not profit from the airport\u2019s use of his name.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Trump) is not charging the Palm Beach International Airport for the use of the name,\u201d Mayfield said. \u201cHe\u2019s not charging them a franchise fee. He\u2019s not charging them a license fee. He\u2019s not charging them a fee for doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayfield said the president\u2019s name had been trademarked for a long time, and that he recently also trademarked his name in the context of an airport to protect his brand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt keeps people from using it in a way that he would not want them to use it,\u201d Mayfield said.<\/p>\n
Palm Beach County Democratic state House Rep. Kelly Skidmore said during debate about the bill Tuesday that she didn\u2019t believe Trump wouldn\u2019t personally profit from the name change.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a man who only thinks about how he can improve his financial situation as the president of the United States,\u201d Skidmore said. \u201cIf you think for one second he\u2019s doing it for free, you\u2019re crazier than he is.\u201d<\/p>\n
During a Democratic caucus meeting on Tuesday, Sen. Tina Polsky also raised concerns about how the name change would affect victims of sexual crimes committed by the late Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
Trump was mentioned multiple times in the Justice Department\u2019s release of the Epstein files. Trump has denied all wrongdoing or knowledge of the crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t need people who are victims of the Epstein class to walk in and out of that airport all the time, and see the name of someone who is mentioned in those Epstein files,\u201d Polsky, a Democrat from Boca Raton, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt happened in Palm Beach,\u201d Polsky added about the sex crimes. \u201cThe people of Palm Beach County are suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bill to rename Palm Beach International Airport as President Donald J. Trump International Airport passed the Florida…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[409,28,30,9129,100,29,4215,16018,9097,557,58953,29569,76500,76499],"class_list":["post-159475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-donald-trump","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-house","tag-florida-legislature","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-senate","tag-international-airport","tag-palm-beach","tag-palm-beach-county","tag-private-company","tag-the-trump-organization","tag-trademark-applications","tag-trump-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}