Phoenix church didn’t know Trump was coming when agreeing to rental
Jun 19, 2020, 1:18 PM | Updated: 2:28 pm
(Facebook Photo/Dream City Church)
(Facebook Photo/Dream City Church)
PHOENIX — The Phoenix megachurch where President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear next week did not know he was coming when it rented a facility to the group hosting the event.
A spokesman for Students for Trump, which is hosting the event Tuesday, told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Friday the president’s involvement wasn’t confirmed before the group secured the facility.
In an online statement dated June 12, Dream City Church said its “facility rental does not constitute endorsement of the opinions of its renters.”
The church says it agreed to rent its auditorium to Turning Point Action for a student event.
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Students for Trump is a project of Turning Point Action, which is a sister group to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization.
Trump’s appearance at the event, called the Students for Trump Convention, was announced June 10.
The event is set for Dream City’s auditorium on Cave Creek Road north of Thunderbird Road. A person who answered the church’s phone Friday told KTAR News that the venue has 3,000 seats.
The convention starts at 1:30 p.m. and concludes after Trump’s appearance, which is expected to begin at 3:40 p.m., the Students for Trump spokesman said.
Dream City has other Arizona campuses in Scottsdale, Glendale and Lakeside as well as churches in Utah and Nebraska.
The White House revealed Friday that Trump would stop in Yuma to survey the border wall and participate in a border security roundtable before heading to Phoenix.
It will be the president’s third Arizona visit during this election year.
His last trip to the state was May 5, when he visited a Honeywell facility that manufactures N95 face masks and participated in a roundtable on Native American issues.
In February, he held one of his signature rallies in front of a full house at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.
Trump’s rallies have been on hold since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but he’s planning to get back on the road starting Saturday with an event at the 19,000-seat Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
