Elections in the US: Ponsonby bar criticized for organizing ‘MAGA party’

A Ponsonby bar has been criticized for hosting what one attendee says was a “MAGA party.”

While celebrating a friend’s recent graduation, Coco Jouavel saw what she called a ute drive down Ponsonby Street outside of SPQR with two large Donald Trump political flags.

After seeing the ute, Jouavel received a few tweets from friends about a party taking place at Hopper Bar in Ponsonby.

A group of friends and Jouavel were curious if they were Trump supporters

They decided that they would go to the bar since it was not far from where they were and they wanted to see what happened.

“We can’t have this here, we have to go see what happens,” he thought at the time.

Although it was announced as an election viewing event, Jouavel said it was a MAGA party.

Once Jouavel and a group of her friends came to the bar and saw five MAGA hats, she said, ‘I was going through crazy emotions.

Jouavel is from Fiji and the West Indies and is a proud black woman who was deeply offended by the MAGA hats worn by the people who drank at the bar.

“It makes you squirm,” he told the Herald.

MAGA is the acronym for Donald Trump’s infamous slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Jouavel said she was threatened by a person wearing a MAGA hat.

While at the bar, a man wearing a MAGA hat raised his hand towards Jouavel.

While at the Hoppers bar, Jouavel approached a black man wearing a MAGA hat and confronted him.

As a black woman, Jouavel said she was quite shocked when she saw this man, acknowledging recent police brutality towards African Americans in the United States.

While recording her interactions with “MAGA supporters,” Jouavel said that she and her friends were escorted out of the bar.

She told the Herald that other “non-Trump supporters” were turned away from the bar.

Jouavel said that “the MAGA hat is like the swastika” and was a “symbol of division”.

While at the bar, a friend of Jouavel’s told the Herald that she didn’t see any Biden decorations, but she did notice Trump figures around the place.

Hoppers Bar told the Herald that the event “was simply the live broadcast of the background US elections.”

It was a request from “good friends of Hopper and patrons of Los Angeles celebrities in which they were all respectfully Democrats.”

“Unfortunately, the evening was marred at the end by activists who felt that it was solely a Trump event, and accused the small minority of Republicans of being racist.”

“As fast as they came, they left.”

“The bar was not pro Trump or Biden and it was a laid back atmosphere all night long,” another bar attendee said.