He went off the deep end.
A Florida man famed for his intense loathing of former President Donald Trump has been banned from a community pool after berating a woman for her “Joe Biden Sucks” T-shirt, according to a report.
Ed McGinty, 74, has long been known in The Villages for plastering his golf cart with signs denouncing Trump and defiantly cruising his community’s sleepy streets.
The homemade placards often feature blunt language.
“Biden will kick Trump’s fat ass,” reads some of McGinty’s golf cart copy.
As a blaring liberal presence in a deeply conservative enclave, McGinty has often skirmished with his fellow retirees since moving to the area from Philadelphia in 2015.
The confrontations normally peter out after an exchange of elderly middle fingers and some spirited verbal crossfire.
But tensions finally boiled over in the lukewarm waters of the Village of Hadley swimming pool in 2021 after McGinty spotted a woman wearing a T-shirt critical of President Biden.
Incensed, McGinty called the woman a “fat slob” before demanding that she remove the garment. He spiced his demand by referring to her as “white trash” and said her pool workout was of limited value due to her girth.
The woman, Liza Adkison, told police that she later spotted McGinty idling outside her nearby home in his signature vehicle.
Inflaming the suburban standoff still further, Adkison’s garage happened to be fashioned as a shrine to Trump, complete with signs and banners extolling his performance as president.
Deputies responded and found McGinty relaxing in his cart while reading a book. He politely told them that he was exercising his constitutional rights but agreed to move his cart down the block to cool the situation.
But Adkison later saw that McGinty had once again parked across from her home while still leafing through his volume.
He was arrested later that day at his home and hit with a stalking rap, but a judge ruled this past April that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the charge and McGinty walked.
While criminally cleared, McGinty still faced another dire punishment — a ban from the Hadley swimming pool. Citing his harassment of the Biden critic, community officials forbade him from using the facility through November.
McGinty petitioned to have the restriction lifted and cited his courtroom triumph as grounds for a poolside return in time for summer.
But after a tense hearing this week, the Sumter Landing Community Development District Board of Supervisors upheld the pool prohibition.
“You can’t disrespect and berate others without consequences,” Adkison told the panel. “I would ask that you send a message to others to behave civilly and with tolerance.”
McGinty suggested that Adkison purposefully wore the shirt to provoke him, but admitted that he should not have asked her to remove it.
“That was a mistake. I never should have done that,” McGinty said.
While he offered some grudging remorse, McGinty couldn’t resist a reference to his old nemesis.
“It was just a Trump cop busting me,” he said, alleging that he was handcuffed by a biased officer.
