As has been the case ever since he was shot in the head in July, former president Donald Trump spoke behind a glass barrier that ensconced him from another would-be gunman.
But Trump touched down in Gastonia, North Carolina as a means to create another protective barrier: a firewall to stave off a rising Kamala Harris in the Tar Heel State.
The crowd was just as rapturous and raucous as any Trump rally in the past nine years since he debuted. There was a sense of finality to the weekend, knowing that if he won, this would be Trump’s final campaign week.
Still, a sense of anxiety hovered over the rally. The final weekend of the campaign is ostensibly about showing strength. It should be about campaigning in states to play on offense when it has certain states locked up. North Carolina was the only swing state in 2020 that broke for him.
One of his first stops after his second indictment last year was at the state GOP convention, a show of strength that showed he would muscle out his-would be challengers Ron DeSantis and his former vice president Mike Pence.
He made the chairman of that state party Michael Whatley the co-chair of the RNC. His campaign has repeatedly dispatched his running mate JD Vance to North Carolina.
“We win this state. We’re going to win the whole ball game.,” Trump said at the airport, to applause.
Some of Trump’s supporters dressed in garbage bags and trash cans, a reference to them being angry at President Joe Biden for supposedly calling them “garbage.” The White House has claimed that Biden was specifically referring to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
Polling shows Harris and Trump about dead-even. And moreover, Harris is now making a last-minute push by visiting Charlotte later on Saturday evening at the nearby PNC Music Pavilion. After a brief stop in Virginia, Trump will head to Greensboro. On Sunday, he will campaign in Kinston and on Monday, he will hold a rally in Raleigh.
But at the Gastonia Municipal Airport, there was a sense of disbelief that North Carolina, or the election nationally could be close. Two volunteers conversing talked about how surprised they were how close it was, talking about how some states were purple.
“I can’t believe that it’s close,” Donna Speed from Gastonia told The Independent, adding that she thinks that Trump would win North Carolina.
“I don’t think that the polls are doing justice,” Donna’s husband James Speed added, claiming that pollsters have just stated their bias as either left-wing or right-wing.
Indeed, the sense of disbelief seemed to pervade the entire rally. Before he took the stage, Representative Dan Bishop of North Carolina bragged about Republican prospects.
“In three days, I’ll be elected the first Republican elected Attorney General of North Carolina in 128 years,” Bishop said. But polling shows Bishop trailing Democratic candidate and fellow congressman Jeff Jackson.
At the same time, Bishop highlighted one advantage Republicans have against their opponents.
“Republicans lead early voting for the first time in history,” he said. “ But here’s the best news of all, there are plenty of Republicans who haven’t voted yet.”
But just before he took the stage, Bishop spoke with a supporter about how Mark Robinson, the beleaguered Republican nominee for governor, would have a tough time. It was a tacit admission that Republicans will likely not win back the governorship even if Trump picks up the state.
As the crowd waited for Trump’s arrival, the former president seemed keen to portray himself as a wrestling babyface (or good guy), playing footage of him shaving former WWE executive Vince McMahon’s head during a Wrestlemania. McMahon’s wife Linda worked in the Trump administration.
After familiar hits including Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” and Guns N’ Roses, the rally even played the entrance music of The Undertaker, the retired WWE legend who recently had Trump on his podcast.
When Trump eventually came on, he bragged about the size of his crowd, saying that about 20,000 people attended the rally.
“We were just going to stop over real quick a little group of people,” he told the crowd to hollers. “And this is not a little group.”
But a few minutes into Trump’s speech, the Speeds left. Indeed, plenty of people said that they were leaving either because they were tired from standing or wanted to beat traffic.
Karen Pratt said she had crossed the border from Spartanburg, South Carolina. She had first gone to see Trump in South Carolina back in 2015 when he first ran.
“We got here early, so we’ve been standing quite a while,” Pratt, who wore socks with Trump’s likeness, told The Independent.
Trump continues to have the support of the diehards though and many stayed. In the same vein, numerous houses in the neighborhood bore massive Trump-Vance banners.
What remains to be seen is whether all those people could help Trump Force One get off the ground in the state where the Wright Brothers flew their first plane.