Clarendon Ballroom is the latest local establishment to get threatening and harassing messages from Trump supporters.
Organizers of a “DeploraBall” sold 500 tickets to the event, ostensibly to be held at the venue, only to learn that Clarendon Ballroom wouldn’t issue a contract. In a note on Facebook, the Virginia establishment wrote that what happened after has “surprised, shaken, and scared” them. Arlington police are monitoring the situation.
In the venue’s account, they had been in communication with organizers about the ball but hadn’t come to a formal agreement. On Monday, they heard via Twitter that 500 tickets had already been sold. And the next night, when a for-profit LLC came forward to request the contract, Clarendon Ballroom decided against it.
“We cannot cancel an event that was never booked. There was never an in person meeting with organizers, never a hand shake, and definitely not signed contracts or deposits,” the venue said in a statement. In an email obtained by NBC, Clarendon Ballroom’s operations director said “I have literally spent my entire day blocking people and deleting hundreds of slanderous, dangerous, vulgar, and threatening posts and tweets, answering threatening phone calls and watching my first ever Twitter War.”
A small sample of the threats that Clarendon Ballroom has received. (Screenshot via Twitter)
Organizers, which include prominent white nationalists, counter that Clarendon Ballroom caved to pressure after a reporter tweeted about the event.
“They knew from the first email that it was an event to celebrate President Trump,” Jack Posobiec, of Citizens for Trump, told The Washington Post. “It was perfectly fine until The Washington Post started calling them out.”
Mike Cernovich (who has been called the “meme mastermind of the alt-right”) says the event is still on, writing that “the good news is that demand is far greater than expected, and the fecklessness of the venue means we can now have a larger party in a bigger venue.”
The kerfuffle with Clarendon Ballroom isn’t the first for those affiliated with DeploraBall group. Citizens for Trump also planned to hold a rally at Arlington’s Long Bridge Park. Arlington County’s Department of Parks and Recreation denied the permit for January 20, because it is a county holiday and staffers have off, though that didn’t stop the complaints, ARLnow reported.
Rachel Sadon