A billboard that will make you do a double-take went up in Cleveland Thursday -- Donald Trump kissing Ted Cruz with the words Love Trumps Hate and End Homophobia next to their faces.
Pedestrians and drivers on the W. 25th St. Bridge stopped to stare and snap selfies, many laughing at the cartoon depiction situated just a few minutes away from the Republican National Convention.
"Trump is a provocative kind of guy, so we're throwing it back at him," said resident Kaitlin Rhodes.
"It's what they both deserve," added her husband Ricky.
Planting Peace, the nonprofit that put up the billboard, said they want to send a strong message to the thousands of Republicans that will descend on Cleveland in just a few days.
What Donald, Ted and the republican platform either fail to realize, or realize and just don’t seem to care about, is that their words and actions toward our LGBT family - especially LGBT children-have meaning and impact. LGBT children hear these messages telling them they are nothing but second class citizens and are left feeling somehow broken or “less than," said president Aaron Jackson.
Another billboard off the Shoreway sends another message -- this one isn't as clear.
It reads "Trump '16, stay on his good side" with a barbed wire fence.
The billboards aren't the only thing going up just days before the convention -- so are 8-foot tall non-scalable barricades, spotted nearly everywhere you look downtown.
The irony of putting up fences to welcome Donald Trump isn't lost on immigration attorney Richard Herman.
"It's a symbol," Herman said of Trump's rhetoric about building a wall across the border.
A symbol Herman has seen before. He was one of hundreds of anti-KKK protesters back in 1999, when similar fencing went up around the Justice Center ahead of a controversial rally.
"It makes me feel less safe seeing these walls," Herman said. "I want to see bridges built in Cleveland."
