They’ve voted for Trump twice but are calling for a change for the next US presidential election: Supporters of Nikki Haley, the first Republican to challenge the former president, were red hot at her first campaign rally on Wednesday.
• Also read: Republican Nikki Haley announces her candidacy for President of the United States
“It was an extremely quick decision”: When Paula Blank found out about the “special announcement” that the Republican had promised her supporters in Charleston in the southeastern United States, the 50-year-old jumped at a plane ticket.
“I called my girlfriend, I said to her:” Let’s go there?
The Republican voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, but waited “years” for whoever is still an outsider in the Republican nomination race to run.
The former UN ambassador “expresses herself and sees the world as it is,” defends Paula Bank.
Nikki Haley had met her followers on Wednesday in a long hangar in this tourist town, surrounded by churches, ice cream parlors and restaurants serving oysters. But that “special announcement” — his first run for the White House — has been in no doubt since Tuesday.
When the 51-year-old candidate asks Americans to “send a tough woman to the White House,” her supporters rejoice. “Niki! Nikki!” they shout.
It doesn’t matter that this black-haired woman has been the voice of Donald Trump’s foreign policy for the past two years.
Or that she has pledged in the past not to compete if the former president were to enter the race.
Because many of the supporters present at this rally on Wednesday are fundamentally convinced that Donald Trump “did a good job”. Like Robin Christmas, a 63-year-old accountant who finds the former president too rude to endorse him a third time.
Instead, this tiny, bespectacled South Carolina woman decided to volunteer for the first time in a presidential campaign for Nikki Haley.
“She’s just amazing,” says the 60-year-old, proudly wearing a blue T-shirt with the name of whoever she hopes will become the first President of the United States.
The polls that put the Republican only 4 or 5% of the vote intentions – and still a long way from the White House? Adam Caldwell wipes them off with a backhand.
“It’s time to move on,” this tall brunette pleads under a beautiful sun, cooled by the events of January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump attacked the US Congressional seat.
The official from neighboring North Carolina went on his birthday to see this child of Indian immigrants who he says embodies “the American dream.”
“Her parents immigrated here, they settled here and now they see their daughter in the highest position,” he enumerates.
The 30-year-old, wearing a flocked T-shirt with the likeness of former President Reagan on the back, applauds: “That only exists in America.”