More than 5,000 people showed up to see Trump in Greensboro this past weekend. We wanted to know why.

On Saturday, thousands of Trump supporters flocked to the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events Center to hear the former president speak. As crowds of attendees snaked through the building, down the sidewalk and into the parking lot, they wore all matter of red, white and blue and held signs supporting Trump and attacking Biden.

While many outlets have since written about Trump and his surrogates’ comments during the rally, TCB wanted to point the microphone at the supporters who still, despite the Jan. 6 insurrection, the 91 felony counts, the sexist and racist comments, support Donald Trump for president. 

While some talked about Trump’s appeal as an “America-first” candidate, others relayed relatable concerns about the state of the economy, inflation and housing prices. 

Carolyn Diane Brown

65, Washington, NC (about 2.5 hours from Greensboro)

This was Carolyn Diane Brown’s fourth time seeing Trump — once in Wilmington last year and twice in Greenville previously.

Brown, who wore a bedazzled denim Trump hat, a black T-shirt with Trump sitting on a throne that read “The Great Maga King,” and American flag leggings, said she’s been a fan ever since she saw Trump on “The Apprentice.”

“I like him because he’s not a swamp-dweller,” Brown told TCB. “I like men who are strong; I don’t like wusses.”

Still, even Brown, who was the most outspoken supporter TCB spoke to, appeared to admit that Trump had his faults.

“He’s not perfect by any means, but none of us are; he’s got issues, he’s in court,” Brown said. “You can agree that some of the things that he did weren’t perfect, but look at the other side.”

However, when asked about what she thought about the criminal charges against Trump, Brown said that she was “concerned” because it could mean that he might get prosecuted. But even then, she said she would still vote for Trump.

“He could be under the jail, and I’m still voting for him,” she said.

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that allowed Trump to be restored to Colorado’s ballot, noting that states cannot reject presidential candidates on grounds that they engaged in rebellion or insurrection.

Additionally, Brown echoed Trump’s “America first” rhetoric.

“Our country is more important than the other countries,” Brown said. “America comes first. If you’re not America first, get away from me; I’m serious.”

It’s the same reason Brown supports the gubernatorial run of current NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who received a passionate ovation from supporters when he spoke ahead of Trump during Saturday’s rally. 

“He’s an America-first candidate,” she said.

In addition to being concerned about immigration, Brown said that she was opposed to Obamacare and that she was supposed to be at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but that she couldn’t make it because of a surgery scheduled the next day.

Ultimately, Brown said she was glad she didn’t go because she could “really easily get into trouble.”

“I would have followed the crowd,” she added.

When asked about the results of the 2020 election, Brown repeated the false claim by Trump that the election was stolen. She also noted that even as a woman, she wasn’t concerned about Trump’s comments about women.

Dorothy Richmond, 79; Roosevelt Sellars, 72; Jimmy Richmond, 59; and Amillion Murphy, 39

Burlington

It was evident, from the crowd, that the Black family standing towards the front of the line that snaked up the sidewalk and down through the parking lot at the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events center was one of the few groups of color at Saturday’s event.

“We’re like the ants in a can of milk,” joked Amillion Murphy.

All four members of the family, including Amillion, told TCB that they had voted for Trump in 2020 and had plans to vote for him again this fall.

The fact that his supporters were predominantly white didn’t bother them.

“Segregation stopped basically 100 years ago,” said Murphy, who noted that she didn’t care about racism because “everybody’s racist out here.”

“It doesn’t hurt me, sticks and stones, but we gotta build our economy,” she argued.

Instead, the family’s main concerns were the cost of goods like groceries and gas, as well as the plight of senior citizens.

“He helped the people during Covid,” said Roosevelt Sellars, the second oldest member of the group. He noted how Trump signed multiple stimulus bills in 2020 at the height of the pandemic including the one on Dec. 27, 2020, in which he advocated for increasing the $600 direct payments to Americans to $2,000 per person.

In the same vein, Jimmy Richmond, 59, stated that he thought the economy was better during Trump’s presidency versus Biden’s.

“I think he lowered the deficit a lot,” Richmond said.

In reality, Donald Trump saw an “explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch,” according to ProPublica.

Upon deeper research, the issue of the national debt and deficit is a much more difficult issue to parse through than just saying it was better or worse under a specific presidency. Given the unprecedented effects of the pandemic, both presidencies saw issues with the job market, inflation and an increase in the national debt. But each also had their own successes and failures, according to reporting by the Washington Post. For example, under Biden, 14 million jobs were added to the market in three years and student loan debt was forgiven by the billions. But during Trump’s presidency, the rate of inflation, and thus the cost of goods like gas and groceries, was lower on average.

The issue of which candidate would be better for seniors, another big concern for Dorothy Richmond, is also a murky subject.

In the lead-up to the primary election, both candidates have pitted their opponent as being a villain towards Medicare and Social Security. 

According to reporting by the New York Times, “Social Security’s main trust fund is currently projected to be depleted in 2033, meaning the program would then be able to pay only about three-quarters of total scheduled benefits. Medicare, for its part, is at risk of not having enough money to fully pay hospitals by 2031.”

According to the Times, last January, Trump said in a video that “under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.” But he has not outlined a clear plan for keeping the programs solvent. On the other hand, in mid 2022, Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which allowed the government and seniors to spend less money to prescription drugs and made Medicare benefits more generous to seniors, per CNN.

Like some other Trump supporters, members of the family denied that Trump had anything to do with the Jan. 6 riot, saying that “nobody told them to go down there.”

A transcript fact check of Trump’s speech from that day recalls his using violent imagery, using words like “strength” and to not show any weaknesses and urging his supporters to “fight.”

He also did tell voters to go to the Capitol, stating “we are going to try and give — the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything — not even one vote.”

Trump made only a passing suggestion that the protest should be nonviolent, saying, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Similar to Brown, the members of the family felt the results of the 2020 election were “unfair,” and cited false claims about the legitimacy of the results. In one instance, Sellars alluded to Melissa Carone, a Trump witness who worked as an IT worker at Detroit’s vote-counting center in 2020. Carone was called as a star witness for Rudy Giuliani during an election-fraud hearing in which she falsely claimed that vans were filled with thousands of bogus ballots and that she saw ballots being illegally scanned multiple times. A circuit court judge denied the Trump campaign’s request to include Carone’s affidavit after finding that her “interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.” In 2022 when Carone attempted to run for office in Michigan, she was disqualified for making false statements in an affidavit.

Caiden Rabineau, 17

Greensboro

Caiden Rabineau was only 9 years old when Trump first announced his run for presidency in 2016. Now, eight years later, he told TCB that he plans to vote for the former president in November after he turns 18 later this year.

Both Rabineau and his friend Dylan Coble cited concerns about the economy and inflation as reasons for supporting Trump.

“I’m 17, and I feel like I can barely afford to do the things I want to do,” Rabineau said. 

And he doesn’t trust President Biden, he said. 

“He’s telling us that he’s going to make the country better, but it’s getting worse,” Rabineau said about the economy.

One of his main gripes, and a recurring theme throughout Saturday’s events was the repeated bashing of what Trump called “migrant crime.”

But before Trump’s speech had even begun, both Rabineau and Coble pointed to “illegal non-Americans” as being part of the economic problem. And the same rhetoric continued during the event. During his speech, Michael Whatley, the chairman of the NC GOP, stated that during Biden’s presidency, 8.5 million undocumented immigrants had crossed into the United States. But that’s a misrepresentation of the data.

According to US Customs and Border Protection, the 8.5 million represents encounters, not individual people.

That means that if one person tries to enter the country three times and is stopped each time by border officials, for example, that equals three encounters, even if it’s the same person encountered,” as explained by Politifact.

But the rhetoric has stuck. Rabineau seemed to equate issues with the economy — despite the steady decrease in inflation over the last two years — to immigration. 

“Immigration is overwhelming the country and they’re giving out jobs to non-Americans that Americans don’t have,” Rabineau said.

But like was noted earlier, Biden added a substantial number of jobs during his presidency, about 400,000 per month, compared to 176,000 per month under Trump.

Still, things like increased gas and home prices have left voters like Rabineau feeling frustrated. That has resulted in him feeling like Trump is the best bet to turning the economy around, compared to Biden or any of the Libertarian candidates.

“I think it would take time, but it would get better,” Rabineau said.

Similar to other voters TCB spoke to, Rabineau wasn’t concerned about the criminal charges against the former president and repeated the debunked claim that the 2020 election was rigged.

Related to that, Rabineau said that he would want to see the US require IDs in all states to vote. This year in North Carolina, voters must show a valid form of ID to cast their vote.

While it’s true that many other countries and democracies around the world require a form of ID to vote, many countries — more than half according to the Pew Research Center — have compulsory voter registration, meaning registration is automatic, which makes access to voting easier. Many countries also have a more streamlined mail-in voting system.

In the US, where many demographics of the population — namely Black residents — have been excluded from the right to vote through racist policies like literacy tests, voter IDs have been found to disproportionately affect voters of color.