SELMA, North Carolina—Donald Trump and JD Vance are spending the final days before the election playing defense in trying to secure North Carolina, a state Trump won in 2016 and 2020.
Trump and Kamala Harris are both flying in for major rallies on Saturday night, as poll watchers elevate it to the number two “tipping point” state in the country after Pennsylvania.
Vance played to a thin crowd here on Friday in a field off Interstate 95. His wife, Usha Vance—an accomplished D.C. lawyer and former Supreme Court clerk—watched quietly as her husband gave a confident speech to a largely empty field.
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It was possible to enter late and walk within six feet of the stage where Vance spoke, an inconceivable idea at a Trump rally, where arriving three hours early is no guarantee of admission.
A thin barrier separated Usha from a thicket of fervent Trump supporters, unaffected by the low turnout, many of whom were wearing hats and T-shirts displaying their allegiance.
Two burly men sat beside each other in “We’re not the GARBAGE” shirts, while three young women in skirts and cowboy boots had turned a set of white big bags into tops for the day. One man had tried to enter the grounds wearing a trash can. All were responding to Joe Biden’s recent errant description of Trump supporters.
Almost everyone in attendance at The Farm on I95 had already voted. “What the hell are you guys doing here?” Vance asked when he realized he was talking entirely to the faithful. “Go get a friend and take them to the polls,” he commanded, telling them to vote 10 times, once legally and nine more times by turning out so many friends.
“The New York Times is going to say JD Vance is encouraging voter fraud,” he said mockingly, as he turned to that reliable punching bag at a Trump campaign rally: the press pen.
Usha Vance, briefly name-checked by her husband, did not rise from her seat in a corner off stage or turn to the crowd at any point. She maintained an almost beatific smile throughout, reacting very little as Vance gave way to Don Jr., a surprise guest who arrived with his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle—the ex-wife of California governor Gavin Newsom—as Vance wound down.
Don Jr.’s color-coded entourage—two women in bright pink “Women for Trump” jackets and a man wearing a “Trump Air” hat—filtered into the crowd as he replaced Vance on stage.
Don Jr., who received no special reaction from the crowd and somewhat incongruously sat down to chants of “JD JD JD,” reveled in Harris’ embrace of Dick Cheney and “the Washington war machine.”
The light turnout underscored the singularity of the Trump movement. It has one star. Everyone else in the MAGA cinematic universe is merely a tiny planet in orbit around the former president.
Satellite characters are celebrated, as Vance was by rally-goers who spoke to the Daily Beast, only insofar as they are part of Trump’s constellation.
The vendors selling Trump merchandise outside the rally can tell you that. They remember how Mike Pence, Trump’s VP pick in 2016, was celebrated at rallies—until he wasn’t. “They liked Pence until that turned,” one said, referring to Pence’s decision to certify the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021.
A paid worker from Elon Musk’s America PAC greeted the scattered inflow of attendees on arrival, signing up local residents for the chance to win $1 million in a daily lottery Musk is running until Election Day. “He has given out $15 million so far,” the worker, an older and well-rounded man, told one attendee in awe.
The strange position of Usha Vance was emphasized by that man, who suggested that white people in London now “get to go to school on minority scholarships, right?” and ridiculed Sadiq Khan, the British capital’s mayor, for having a “good Anglican name.”
The comments recalled a different time: when JD Vance had rejected Trump in 2016—publicly calling him “noxious” and “a total fraud.” The New Yorker reported this week that the comments had triggered “some really racist attacks from Trump supporters because of Usha’s race,” as Vance reportedly told a friend.
Vance—wearing a beautiful pair of black Oxford shoes with a trouser leg cut too high and an incongruous belt—spoke fluently, mocking Harris’ tendency to talk about her “middle class” background when asked by interviewers to be specific about how she will build an “opportunity economy.”
One long-time vendor, who tried to sell merchandise outside every Democratic presidential rally in 2020, was amazed the party had picked Harris as its nominee.
“I regretted doing merch on her, because I threw a bunch of it in the trash,” he said. Her supporters would come out flat, he said, remembering events held throughout Iowa in 2019.
Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were the Democratic candidates off whom you could sell merchandise, he said. Vendors serve as de facto pollsters during primaries: It was clear to this vendor that Vivek Ramaswamy was outperforming and DeSantis was falling flat last year.
Now there’s money to be made off Vance—so long as he stands in for Trump.
