When it comes to American voters, chants of “USA, USA, USA,” will trump “FJB” any day of the week.
And that was the kind of patriotic, hero’s welcome that greeted former President Donald Trump on Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, according to the Durham Herald-Sun.
And in a state that could be key to the November election, that could make all the difference.
The setting was NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600, drawing a crowd of 80,000, the Herald-Sun reported.
Check out some of the scenes here:
Unbelievable moment! The NASCAR crowd goes wild as Trump makes a grand entrance flying over the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte, NC!
The energy at the Coca-Cola 600 was electric as former President Trump soared above, sending fans into a frenzy. #NASCAR #CocaCola600 #Trump pic.twitter.com/DVYFaigOlK
— Isaak T. Ruiz (@IsaakRuizBeast) May 26, 2024
Enormous crowd chants “USA! USA! USA!” as President Trump ascends into his Pit Road viewing box at Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR.
The people love their real president!pic.twitter.com/5SUa1lPm2Y
— Paul A. Szypula (@Bubblebathgirl) May 26, 2024
SEE IT: Supporters Welcome Donald Trump in Charlotte for NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600. WATCH pic.twitter.com/gz04DBAft2
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) May 27, 2024
Even NASCAR legend Richard Petty got in on the act.
LEGENDARY RACE CAR DRIVER RICHARD PETTY AKA “THE KING” TELLS TRUMP HE’S “THE BEST.”
Rightful President Trump has made HISTORY as the first President to ever attend this event.
Meanwhile, Biden is vacationing.
Biden doesn’t want you to share this!
pic.twitter.com/UO7xsfrB81— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) May 27, 2024
Astute Americans will remember that NASCAR is the sport that inadvertently gave the nation “Let’s Go Brandon,” the sarcastic bowdlerization of a more obscene slogan that made its way into the political vocabulary in 2021 when an NBC reporter misinterpreted (accidentally or otherwise) the crowd chanting “f*ck Joe Biden” after a race at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway was won by driver Brandon Browne.
Will Trump win in November?
From its NASCAR roots, “let’s go, Brandon” has become a rallying cry — along with the initialism “FJB” and its more explicit source phrase — among Americans disgusted with President Joe Biden’s maladministration of the country, from the humiliation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan to the ongoing festering wounds of unaffordable inflation and a dangerously open southern border.
The kind of sentiments, in other words, that are powering Trump’s lead in presidential polls.
Whoever wins in November, North Carolina and its 16 Electoral College votes are going to be key.
North Carolina has a history of going Republican in presidential contests, as the website 270towin notes. Since Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980, it has voted for the Democratic candidate only once, when Barack Obama was in his first bid for the White House.
But Democrats aren’t a pushover there. Gov. Roy Cooper is a member of Biden’s party.
Trump’s 2020 win in the Tar Heel State came by only 1.3 percent of the vote, according to U.S. News & World Report — less than half of his 3.6 percentage point lead in 2016.
Those numbers, and the fact that the Biden campaign is planning to fight hard for the state, according to NPR (a semi-official mouthpiece for any Democratic administration), make it a potentially crucial swing state.
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That goes a long way toward explaining Trump’s presence.
But his visit wasn’t all glad-handing the likes of Richard Petty.
According to the Sun-Herald, Trump visited with Gold Star families of fallen U.S. service members, as well as the family of a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer who was killed along with three other law enforcement agents while serving a warrant on April 29.
Trump also met with Officer Christopher Tolley, who was wounded in that infuriating incident.
But those meetings aren’t the images that are coming out of Trump’s presidential visit to the Coca-Cola 600 — a first for the track’s history, according to USA Today.
The images that are resonating are the hero’s welcome Trump received — and the chants of “USA, USA, USA” that no doubt rang in his ears.
And that will beat “FJB” any day at all.
