Donald Trump’s campaign event at Pickens, a South Carolina town of some 3,400 people, drew a crowd much larger than the town itself according to Fox News. The former president and Republican 2024 frontrunner spoke on Saturday in the town to more than 50,000 rally goers who lined the streets of the small southern town. The police chief of the town, Randal Beach, estimated the crowd’s size as “somewhere between 50-55,000” people.
At the rally Trump said “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be to kick off the Fourth of July weekend than right here on Main Street, with thousands of hardworking South Carolina patriots who believe in God, family and country.” South Carolina is first state in the south where a presidential primary is held. “None of the other candidates in the race, however, drew an audience like Trump, who continues to dominate in 2024 polls” as Fox News admits. This show of support for Trump has not diminished in light of the lawfare thrown against the former president.
The rally was expected to draw 30,000 persons. Not only South Carolinians attended the rally at Pickens. Greg Pressley and his wife Robin drove three hours from Tennessee to see Trump. “Donald Trump’s the best president in history…I love his policies. I love the man. I’m here to support him getting back to where he needs to be, to begin with” said Greg.
Trump through his social media app, Truth Social, called the event “a great day in Pickens!” and displayed on his truth a message from Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) who estimated there were “a total of 75,000 people” trying to get into the rally.
Trump’s warm reception contrasted to that given by the crowd to Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) who was the recipient of booing by the crowd before and during the Senator’s speech. As one RSBN reporter put it, “They booed him when he arrived and they booed him when he left. At no point did they cheer for him. At one point they even started chanting ‘Traitor.’ They believe he has sold them out…The people of South Carolina really did not like him.”
Senator Graham is heavily aligned in many people’s eyes with the old neoconservative wing of the Republican party that has more than its fair share of responsibility for what the new wing of the party branded as the endless forever wars that country is fighting and the consequences from these military actions. Trump, by contrast, is seen as against that wing of the party. Graham also turned against Trump regarding his vote to approve the 2020 election.