Posted originally on the CTH July 1, 2023 | Sundance
We tend to forget but prior to candidate Donald J. Trump, in 2015, it was very rare to see presidential rallies with more than a few thousand attendees.
Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders each had sporadic big venue rallies at mostly schools and universities where attendance would top 10,000; however, no one consistently has rallies anywhere near the scale of Trump rallies.
According to the Greenville News, citing the police chief in South Carolina today, over 50,000 people showed up to support President Donald Trump in Pickens. That is a massive crowd of people traveling to one town venue.
[Greenville News] – […] Pickens Police Chief Randall Beach estimated a crowd of 50,000 showed up on a day when afternoon temperatures soared into the mid-90s, causing dozens of people suffer from heat-related illness. … “No way it was less than 50,000,” Beach said. (link)
(Via Daily Mail) – If anyone thought Donald Trump’s legals woes would eat into his public support in red state America then no one thought to tell the people of Pickens, South Carolina.
Its population of 3,300 was swollen by thousands more who crammed into its main street to see the former president hold his first rally since being being charged with mishandling classified documents. Supporters behind him waved ‘witch hunt’ signs as he described how he had been charged under the Espionage Act.
‘Me? the espionage act?’ he said, describing how it was a an ‘act for crimes so heinous’ that the death penalty was needed.
‘it’s one of the most vicious legal theories ever put in a court of law. there’s never been anything like this,’ he added.
Insiders said the words were not the most important thing. The size of the crowd was what mattered about the day, making it a huge show of support.
The tiny city of Pickens closed its streets for the former president, packing in supporters who had traveled from North Carolina and Georgia, as well as South Carolina.
They stood on Main Street, between the county courthouse and Biven’s hardware store.
They heard Trump describe how as president he had ‘absolute right’ to declassify documents. And he said he was changing up his language because of the way he had been forced to appear in court earlier this month.
‘Now the gloves are off from that standpoint, what they’ve done is so terrible,’ he said.
‘So I’ll speak differently than I would have three weeks ago, because you never heard me use this kind of language. I wouldn’t want to out respect for our country and for the office.
‘But we really have no choice. These people are sick. They’re sick people.’
And he called special counsel Jack Smith a ‘thug’ for the way he had been pursued. (read more)
Centinel2012 