By the time the doors opened at 7 a.m., hundreds of people had gathered outside J.S. Dorton Arena on Monday morning to make sure they could get a good seat at Donald Trump’s last rally in North Carolina before Election Day.
The first attendees began arriving from 3 a.m., and some had driven for hours in the early morning. Pat Ammerman and Shirley Smedley-Theiss, said they also attended Trump’s 2016 rally in Raleigh the day before the election. Smedley-Theiss said the energy of his rallies - like a football game - made them want to keep going back.
“[It’s] way bigger, even [more than] the Super Bowl,” Smedley-Theiss said.
Many of the attendees had already voted, and said they were there just to see Trump himself speak and experience a rally.
“Pretty much we've been hearing the same message,” Smedley-Theiss said. “He doesn't change. He keeps saying the same thing, what he's going to do, and we just want to - it's the enthusiasm of the crowd that gets you here.”
During the rally, Trump mainly talked about immigration. At one point, the campaign played a video showing people describing their personal experiences with crime caused by immigrants.
“They have 21 million people that they let into our country,” Trump said. “Many of these people are murderers. Think of it. Thirteen thousand and ninety-nine are murders. The big drug lords, the prison population from countries all over the world.”
Trump, who has made similar statements in previous speeches, is referring to data from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement report, which includes numbers about the people under its supervision. The data showed 13,099 people who were found guilty of homicide and 425,431 people who are convicted criminals — but the numbers span decades, including time during Trump’s administration.
