Over 23,000 People Show Up To See President Trump In Gastonia, NC!

Local WBTV confirmed 23,000+ were in attendance:

President Donald Trump visited Gastonia Wednesday for a campaign rally that .
The president delivered remarks at a Make America Great Again Rally on Oct. 21. The event happened at Gastonia Municipal Airport on Gaston Day Road. Doors opened at 4 p.m., with the event starting at 7 p.m.

On Monday, Gaston County health officials said they had not received formal plans and specifics from the Trump campaign about the planned rally.

The health department says it recommended people in large gatherings to social distance and wear face coverings.

Jon Boyd, with the Gaston Municipal Airport, told WBTV on Tuesday they were expecting between 15,000 and 30,000 attendees at the rally. There were 800 seats, while the rest of attendees stood.

On Thursday, those numbers were confirmed. Officials say at least 23,000 people attended the event.

“I wasn’t here when the call came in but I was quickly notified that they were doing the presidential rally here and I jokingly thought it was a hoax,” Boyd told WBTV.

From Charlotte Agenda:

When Trump took the stage, it was as if AC/DC had come up from the floor.

“Thirteen days,” he said to start, referencing the days between this moment and his final presidential election day. “Can you believe it? Thirteen days from now and you see what’s happening: bump, bump, bump. They’re starting to get nervous.”

“Conservative awakening!” a man in the rafters near me shouted.

He hit on all the issues his supporters care about in rapid fire: police and law enforcement, the second amendment, immigration, and ensuring “more products are proudly stamped with the phrase, ‘Made in the U.S.A.’” He localized the address, talking about bringing back manufacturing and taking care of tobacco farmers.

He claimed he’d protect the suburbs from things like “low-income housing,” and said he’d put an end to policies that “order you to stay at home while letting rioters and MS-13 killers will roam free without masks. Without masks. MS-13 doesn’t have to wear a mask.” He may have been talking about Antifa.

It was hardly offensive to his crowd.

I met two local women who immigrated to the United States from Peru and Chile in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “I think he’s the best president in my 20 years here,” Carolina Sprinkle said.

They’re part of the Latinas for Trump group. As Catholics, they said their most important issue was Trump’s stance against abortion. Also, “Capitalism,” Shirley Cano-Michael said, “has made this country great.”

I asked them if they were worried about the virus. They each pointed to their masks. They’d worn them all night they said.

“But I don’t want the virus to stop life,” Sprinkle said.

Trump Gastonia rally 2020 election October 21, 2020

That’s what Trump and Forest are counting on, that more people are like Sprinkle — people who say that even as case numbers rise in North Carolina again, they’ll vote against candidates who support a shutdown.

Of course, one could say — as health experts have — that if everybody wore masks and distanced, the numbers wouldn’t be rising again. Standing here, there was no doubt that only one person on the planet could convince them to do that, and he wasn’t going to.

The crowd size was the story.

“That’s a lot of people,” Trump said to them after a large applause. “You should’ve seen the people on the road, they couldn’t get in. You know, as big as this crowd is. Tens of thousands of people on the roads coming up.”

The crowd cheered.

He then recounted a conversation he says he had with a police officer before the event, in which he encouraged them to let more people in.

“I said, ‘Officer, we have 10,000 people out there, much more than that, all the way down.’ … I said, ‘It’s a field, just — Let’s open it up, let’s move the trucks back, the bus and everything.’

“They said, ‘Sir, we have a problem.’ (I said) ‘What?’ (They said) ‘Stampede.’”

The crowd laughed.

“I said, ‘Stampede?’ … ‘I thought that was for cattle?’”

Trump Gastonia rally 2020 election October 21, 2020

Right around the time he said that, Joe Biden released a statement.

“Nearly 4,000 North Carolinians have died due to Covid-19, and nearly 25,000 have tested positive, but President Trump still has no plan on how to get this virus under control,” the statement read. “Instead he’s … holding rallies that fly in the face of North Carolina’s Covid-19 guidelines.”

Earlier in the day, Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris had been in Charlotte, speaking to a smaller, socially distanced audience at the minor-league stadium. Last month, Biden was at Charlotte’s Camp North End, speaking to a little more than a dozen people who sat in chairs surrounded by circles.

Trump took shots at the Biden campaign’s precautions. Made fun of the circles and made fun of the crowd sizes. In doing so, he only endeared himself to the thousands herded around him.

Polls show that it’s not working, at least not in the things polls show. Biden still leads in North Carolina, one of the most crucial swing states in the 2020 election. But standing here, hours after the governor warned of rising case numbers, the polls didn’t seem to matter and lockdown orders definitely didn’t — nothing mattered as much as what the person on the stage was saying.

“The pandemic is rounding the corner,” Trump said. “They hate it when I say that. You turn on this MSDNC and fake news CNN and all you hear is COVID. COVID. COVID, COVID. COVID. COVID.”

BOOOOOO, the 23,000 people here roared back.

“COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. COVID.”