A Small Town’s Fourth of July: Flags, a 5K and
Trump’s Attacks on American Institutions
Ahead of a holiday meant to celebrate the country’s
history, the former president tore into American institutions and attacked his
political opponents.
Michael
Gold
By Michael
Gold
Reporting
from Pickens, S.C.
July 1,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/us/politics/trump-pickens-independence-day.html
Former
President Donald J. Trump drew a crowd of thousands on Saturday to a quiet
South Carolina town’s Independence Day event, where he assailed the integrity
of major American institutions and painted a dark portrait of the country ahead
of a holiday meant to celebrate its underpinnings.
Speaking
for nearly 90 minutes on Main Street in Pickens, S.C., with at least 20
American flags behind his back, Mr. Trump often eschewed the rhetorical
flag-waving and calls for unity that have long been as central to Independence
Day as hot dogs, baseball and fireworks.
Instead,
the twice-impeached and twice-indicted former president railed against
Democrats and liberals, who he said threatened to rewrite America’s past and
erase its future. He skewered federal law enforcement, which he accused without
evidence of rampant corruption. And he attacked President Biden, enumerating
what he saw as his character flaws and accusing him of taking bribes from
foreign nations.
“We want to
have a respect for our country and for the office” of the presidency, Mr. Trump
said. “But we really have no interest in people who are sick.”
Mr. Trump’s
comments were largely familiar. But the event highlighted the hold he has on
his most fervent supporters — a challenge for his Republican rivals as they
seek their party’s presidential nomination from far behind Mr. Trump in the
polls.
Despite
sweltering humidity and heat, thousands of people swarmed the streets of
Pickens — a town of about 3,000 in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains —
beginning at dawn.
Pam Nichols,
who described herself as an “insurrectionist,” said that she flew from
Mundelein, Ill., to proudly support Mr. Trump in person. She had last done so
in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, she said, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters
stormed the Capitol building. She did not talk in detail about her actions that
day.
“I was told
to lay low after,” Ms. Nichols said, adding that she had watched a number of
Mr. Trump’s speeches online since. “But I felt like it’s time to come out now.
I’m tired of laying low.”
The event
in Pickens was only Mr. Trump’s second full-scale rally since he kicked off his
campaign in November. Though such rallies were a hallmark of his past two
campaigns, he has so far largely taken the stage at events organized by other
groups.
Bryan
Owens, the director of marketing for Pickens, said that a representative for
the Trump campaign reached out two weeks ago to ask to come to the town for its
Independence Day celebration.
South
Carolina, an early nominating state, was a key victory for Mr. Trump in the
2016 primaries as he sought to unite the Republican Party behind him. In 2020,
he won the state handily, drawing overwhelming support in this region, a
conservative swath of 10 counties in the northwest corner known as the Upstate.
Mr. Owens
said that the town’s decision was easy. Though he personally would not support
Mr. Trump in 2024, he said, the opportunity to bring a former president to
Pickens was too good to pass up.
“This is a
once-in-a-lifetime event for Pickens,” Mr. Owens continued, gesturing behind
him to a crowd that packed the streets and stretched for several blocks. “And
people that aren’t that familiar with small towns — they’ll get that experience.”
Pickens’s
Independence Day festivities began with a 5K race to raise money to repair
water fountains on a local nature trail. American flags lined the streets, and
signs encouraged visitors to shop local, even as businesses on Main Street were
closed because of Secret Service measures.
With
parking near the site of the rally limited, residents were charging up to $100
— cash, many were quick to clarify — to let visitors leave cars in their
driveways or on their lawns. For another $20, a golf cart might shuttle you
from your car toward the rally’s entrance, outside a McDonald’s at the end of
Main Street.
Red, white
and blue were the wardrobe colors of the day, from hat to boots. Tammy
Milligan, of Myrtle Beach, S.C., arrived dressed in a Wonder Woman costume,
which she said she started wearing around the time of Mr. Trump’s first
impeachment in 2019.
Even as she
stood behind Mr. Trump wholeheartedly and called him a patriot, she
acknowledged that much of the country felt differently — which she framed as an
American ideal.
“Well,
everyone’s entitled to think what they want to think,” Ms. Milligan said.
“That’s our country.”
Mr. Trump
was not so generous. He dwelled on the federal indictment that charged him with
illegally retaining national security documents and obstructing the
government’s efforts to reclaim them. And even as he denounced the prosecution
as an egregious and politically motivated step, he vowed, as he has before,
that he would reciprocate in kind if elected.
Outlining a
dark vision of America, Mr. Trump called his political opponents “sick people”
and “degenerates” who were “running our country to the ground.”
Michael
Gold
Michael
Gold is a reporter covering transit and politics in New York. More about
Michael Gold
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