COLUMBIA, S.C. — Former President Donald Trump has arrived at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia to watch the Gamecocks and Tigers and to campaign for votes.
The former president and current front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination is on hand Saturday for South Carolina hosting Clemson in the annual Palmetto Bowl. He arrived at the stadium around 7 p.m., walking into the stadium’s “Hall of Captains” where he was greeted by several dozen supporters who’d shown up.
Earlier in the day, as tens of thousands of Gamecock and Tiger fans gathered around the stadium on Saturday afternoon, more than a half-dozen electronic billboards around the capital city of Columbia boasted a message noting Trump’s 2020 election loss and his pending legal cases: “You lost. You’re guilty. Welcome to Columbia, Donald.” Some vendors around the venue, meanwhile, hawked Trump-related merchandise, including “Trump 2020” flags, from the previous election cycle.
Hours before kickoff, Trump’s campaign announced that he had been endorsed by “more South Carolina legislators than all opposing candidates combined,” including new backing from six state lawmakers who had previously supported U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, before the South Carolinian ended his presidential bid earlier this month.
“We do it bigtime in the South,” said Brandon Beach, a Georgia state senator and top Trump supporter who traveled with him in September for the game in Ames. “President Trump knows he can connect with people, and they are going to connect with him.”
South Carolina falls fourth in the GOP voting calendar after Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, with the state’s first-in-the-South primary coming up on Feb. 24, 2024. Several Southern states follow on March 5 as part of the Super Tuesday slate that puts more delegates up for grabs than any other day in the primary campaign.
Trump’s South Carolina and Super Tuesday romps in 2016 gave him a delegate lead he would never relinquish.
Flagship public universities, especially in the South, bring together much of a state’s business, civic and political leadership, spanning small towns to cities.
Additionally, major college football games are replete with the kind of pageantry — giant U.S. flags on the field during pregame festivities, military flyovers piloted by alumni of the home team to conclude the national anthem — that Trump seeks out.
“These are American values,” said Beach, noting he saw the same thing in Ames when some fans chanted “USA! USA! USA!” when they saw the former president. “They realize how much Trump loves our country. … They want what he wants: Good energy policy, a secure border, to be safe.”
Trump, who tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and ended up part of a failed alternative league, has enjoyed sports cameos over the years. But college football has afforded him his most generous welcomes, including at the 2018 national championship game in Atlanta and the 2019 Alabama-LSU regular season game in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.