‘We are
locked and loaded’: Trump fans in North Carolina ready for a ‘stolen election’
Supporters
in Kinston back ex-president as he claims he’s well ahead in polls and repeats
conspiracy of election fraud
Ed
Pilkington in Kinston, North Carolina
Sun 3 Nov
2024 18.46 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/03/trump-supporters-election-results
“As
Republicans, we are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
The
startling comment came from a mother of five and grandmother of two, Vikki
Westbrook, as she lined up on Sunday outside an aircraft hangar in rural North
Carolina. She had come to hear Donald Trump make one of his last pitches of the
2024 presidential election.
Westbrook,
55, wasn’t entirely joking with her “locked and loaded” remark. Nor was she
being entirely frivolous.
She does own
guns, she said, though she wouldn’t specify how many.
Personally,
she intended to avoid any trouble that might erupt in the wake of Tuesday’s
election, she said. “I have kids, I can’t afford to go to prison. And I don’t
like orange.”
It’s her
fellow Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters whom she fears might be
tempted to take action should the former president lose the election. “At this
point, a lot of Republicans aren’t going to take it any longer. They won’t let
the election be stolen from us twice.”
Westbrook
remains convinced that the 2020 presidential election was snatched from Trump.
Now she is equally certain that should Kamala Harris win on Tuesday, it will be
for one reason only.
“Only if
they cheat. I’m absolutely positive of that.”
Trump has
been studiously nurturing such passions for years, his rhetoric rising in
intensity in recent days. He has repeatedly refused to confirm that he will
accept the results of the vote count, and earlier on Sunday he told supporters
in Pennsylvania that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House four years ago.
A recent
survey by the Public Religion Research Institute recorded that one in four
Republican Trump supporters believe that were Trump to lose the election, he
should declare the results invalid and do “whatever it takes” to retake the
White House. That’s a sobering finding, but a grossly understated one, judging
from the mood at Trump’s Kinston rally.
“People will
riot if Trump doesn’t win,” said Cedric Perness, 38, an African American Trump
supporter. He said it would be too dangerous for him to participate in any
post-election unrest – “I’d get killed right there.”
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Instead he
does what he can, he said, to help Trump by selling merchandise on his
campaign’s behalf. He has a stall of hats and T-shirts, some saying: “You
missed bitches. Two times!”
In the final
stages of the 2024 race, Trump has been whipping up the passions of his
millions of devoted followers to a fever pitch. In the last three days of
campaigning alone he has made four stops in North Carolina, a battleground
state which the Democrats have won only twice since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the
other time being Barack Obama in 2008).
Trump must
hold North Carolina to have a clear shot at returning to the White House.
In these
frantic last hours, he has pursued a two-pronged strategy to fire up his
followers. On the one hand, he has been raising their expectations by claiming
that he is well ahead in the polls.
“We’re going
to have on Tuesday a landslide that’s too big to rig,” a tired and
hoarse-sounding Trump told the Kinston crowd. “We have a big lead. We have a
big lead. The fake news, they don’t tell you this. We have a big, beautiful
lead.”
In fact,
poll trackers suggest that he and Harris remain neck-and-neck in North Carolina
and the other six critical swing states.
On the other
hand, Trump has also been laying the foundations of a renewed conspiracy,
should he need it, to subvert the election results by alleging widespread
fraud. He touted the false accusation at the Kinston rally that Democrats are
enabling non-citizens to vote in vast numbers, accusing the Biden
administration of pursuing an open-border policy on the southern border with
Mexico “maybe [because they] want to put them on the voting rolls. That’s
probably the reason.”
Supporters
at the rally faithfully parroted the lie on Sunday.
“That’s why
they opened the border, to allow all the illegals in so they could vote for
Democrats,” said a woman in the line who declined to give her name. “There’s
always been corruption in this country, but I had no idea it was this bad.
America has been run into the ground – anyone with half a brain can see that.”
Almost as
pervasive as the supporters’ belief in the demonic intentions of Democrats was
their frustration at what they could do about it. Last time around, such toxic
emotions culminated in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
The Kinston
rally goers, following Trump’s lead, universally dismissed January 6 as a “set
up” in which peaceful and patriotic Americans were lured into a dastardly
deep-state trap. Westbrook, the “locked and loaded” grandmother, admitted to
having been present at the Capitol that day.
Hundreds of
Trump supporters, driven to distraction by the then president’s “stop the
steal” rhetoric, stormed the heart of American democracy on that day. In the
violent clashes that ensued, approximately 140 police officers were assaulted.
That’s not
how Westbrook sees it. “It wasn’t what they said happened. The only people
causing trouble were antifa, they were put into us to cause problems.”
This is a
lot for any American voter to be carrying. The 2020 election was stolen from
her candidate of choice, she firmly believes, and now she’s worried that
Tuesday could see a repeat performance.
“Four years
ago I felt angry, very angry. This time I will be even more angry.”
Should her
worst fears come to pass, and Trump lose, where will all that powerful emotion
go?
“If he
loses, I’m scared,” the grandmother said.
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