Former President Donald Trump heads to the tiny city of Pickens, South Carolina, for its Independence Day festival on Saturday where his aides say supporters can expect ‘retail politics on steroids.’
He will join up with a choir that made headlines when it was stopped from singing the national anthem at the U.S. capitol.
It will be Trump’s first rally since being charged with mishandling classified documents (charges he denies) but insiders say it will differ from his trademark mass performances as his campaign experiments with different types of events.
And it brings the former president to one of the early state’s most pro-Trump counties, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The tiny city of Pickens has a population of barely 3,000 people.
Donald Trump heads to the tiny city of Pickens, South Carolina, for its Independence Day festival on Saturday where his aides say supporters can expect ‘retail politics on steroids’
Trump has invited the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir, from nearby Greenville, to perform after they were prevented from signing the national anthem at the U.S. Capitol
It will also give him the chance to show off his support in a state that two of his rivals for the Republican nominations — former Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott — call home.
Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the festival setting would give Trump a chance to meet people up close. ‘Retail politics on steroids,’ he called it.
‘We’ll still have rallies,’ he said.
‘We’re trying to we’re trying to do a lot of different things, and a lot of non-traditional things. This is one of them.’
Trump’s event is part of the city’s ‘Independence Day Spectacular,’ which includes a fireworks display at dusk. City-center roads will be closed to hold the crowds.
The city of Pickens had been planning the event for eight months. Then Sen. Lindsey Graham called a few weeks ago to ask if Trump could speak, according to Bryan Owens, the city’s marketing director.
‘The reason they chose Pickens is because it’s quaint, historic and beautiful,’ he told WSPA, the local CBS affiliate.
‘We want to be able to showcase that to the world. Just like anybody else, we welcome anybody who wants to come to Pickens and see the beauty we have to offer.’
Trump was forced to cancel a rally in Iowa last month as a storm closed in. Workers are pictured dismantling structures at the site after it was postponed
But the V.I.P. guest created a headache, forcing officials to work out how they could fit the expected crowds into the city-center.
Trump has invited the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir, from nearby Greenville, to perform.
The choir went viral with a video showing them singing the national anthem in the U.S. Capitol only for them to be stopped by police.
Officers initially said they were preventing a ‘demonstration’ only for them to backtrack and claim there had been a miscommunication.
Now they will be a star turn at the Trump event where local police said they expect as many as 30,000 people could turn out.
He will be on friendly territory. The county voted 74 percent in his favor at the 2020 election, and attendees are expected to come from its near neighbors of North Carolina and Georgia.
Rallies are a key part of Trump’s strategy, like this one he held in Waco, Texas, in March
Trump’s last rally was planned for Des Moines, Iowa, in May but had to be abandoned amid tornado warnings.
Trump is the clear frontrunner for the G.O.P. nomination and is frequently polling about 50 percent among Republicans when asked for their primary pick.
On Friday evening, he addressed the Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia.
He welcomed the decision by the Supreme Court to end President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
‘Today, the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden is not allowed to wipe out trillions of dollars in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions of people who have paid their debt through hard work and diligence,’ he said.
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