Donald Trump's circus arrived this Friday afternoon in the quiet town of Rock Hill, South Carolina, with all the equipment: the streets closed and traffic jams, the secret service snipers on the roof of the basketball court at Winthrop University, where he was scheduled to speak, the flying vendors of MAGA
merchandise
in all its varieties and the supporters who stood in line for hours to secure a spot.
It is, after all, the great
show
of the former president and candidate to return to the White House as he passes through one of those places where nothing ever happens and who suddenly receives a visit from one of the most famous human beings on the planet.
Trump owed the State at least one last visit before the South Carolina primary elections, which will be held this Saturday.
He faces Nikki Haley at the polls this Saturday, the only standing rival of the 13 who dared to challenge the former president for the throne of the Republican Party, while, for a brief moment, he seemed vulnerable.
Haley, who has been meeting her supporters all week in certainly more modest and less vociferous groups, was born in this corner of the southern United States and was its governor between 2011 and 2017, until the magnate, then president, appointed her. United States ambassador to the United Nations.
Despite that pedigree, she has the odds of losing: polls give Trump an advantage over her of almost 35 points.
The sports center, with just over six thousand seats, had at least a tenth of the seats unoccupied, although the speaker insisted on the stage that people had been left outside, frustrated at not being able to enter.
It was just one of the many lies and half-truths that he let out during a speech lasting just over two hours, which was broadly the same as what he has been offering in recent months, except that he took the opportunity to intervene in a hot topic this week. : the controversial decision of the Alabama Supreme Court that threatens to upend the practice of in vitro fertilization in that State, and, perhaps, in the entire country.
There, seven of its nine justices voted Monday in favor of considering frozen babies as “children.”
A couple of hours before the rally, Trump had published the following message on Truth, his social network, with the usual emphatic use of capital letters: “Like the VAST MAJORITY of Americans, including the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, conservatives “We, Christians and
pro-life Americans, strongly support the availability of
in vitro
fertilization
for couples who are trying to have a baby.”
In Rock Hill, he asked that the Alabama Congress “quickly find a solution to maintain the availability” of the procedure in the State after the unpopular court decision of the many of the first swords of the Republican Party have been trying to distance themselves all week.
Tim Scott's Blind Support
The other big news of the afternoon was seeing the African-American senator for South Carolina Tim Scott warm up the masses awaiting the arrival of the great protagonist.
Scott was one of the Republicans who ran to be elected by his party as a candidate for the White House, and since he dropped out of the race, during which Trump dedicated the usual battery of insults and humiliations that he reserves for his opponents, the senator has become, at times to the point of blushing, a
hooligan
of the former president.
In the increasingly animated pools about who will accompany him as a candidate for the vice presidency, Scott is beginning to sound louder, due to the alleged influence that his selection could have on that African-American voter who gave victory to Joe Biden in 2020, and who Now Biden's performance is frustrated with the results.
Other possible names for the position include Ohio Senator JD Vance, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
The three spent Friday at the Conservative Action Political Conference, held every year near Washington in what used to be a meeting of ideas about the future of the Republican Party that has recently become a meeting at the summit of the most uncritical Trumpism.
Beyond these novelties, Trump's electoral event in South Carolina abounded in many of the keynote speaker's obsessions and manias.
In an erratic speech full of repetitions, he said that his presidency had been a total triumph and Biden's, the most absolute disaster.
He attacked trans people and the teaching of America's racist past in schools.
He again insisted that the 2020 elections were “rigged”, defined as “bullshit” the four trials before him, in which he faces 91 criminal offences, accused immigrants of being murderers and gangsters and promised a new dawn of the American spirit (the much-used
Make America Great Again)
if he is re-elected on November 5.
Because on that date, and not on this Saturday's primaries, which he considered won by a landslide, Trump has his sights set.
In one of his most celebrated outbursts reminiscent of his past as a reality star, he exclaimed, “Joe Biden, you're fired!”
Shortly after the rally, American organizations in favor of women's reproductive freedom reacted to the former president's statements on
in vitro
fertilization by recalling that Trump was the president who appointed three of the six conservative justices of the Washington Supreme Court, a majority who voted in 2021 in favor of repealing the precedent of the
Roe v. Wade ruling,
which gave federal protection in 1973 to the right to abortion.
“Donald Trump will say anything to get re-elected, but voters know they can't trust him.
He has repeatedly lied and changed his mind about his stance on reproductive freedom.
“Trump, and Republicans across the country, saw the quick and immediate reaction to his hypocrisy, and now Trump is afraid,” Planned Parenthood stated in a statement.
Follow all the information on the elections in the United States in
our weekly newsletter
.