There’s a definite feel at Saint Anselm College that the 2024 presidential campaign is really beginning tonight. There’s excitement, tension and dissent in the air that recalls the build-up to a presidential debate.
The fact that the unpredictable Donald Trump is the presidential frontrunner after a tumultuous presidency and refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election is only deepening the feeling that something big is about to happen – as town hall attendees line up to clear Secret Service security checks near protesters shouting anti-Trump slogans.
Many of the registered Republicans and voters who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP primary are hoping they will get called upon.
One Trump supporter, Karen Langella, said that she hoped that the questions would “not focus on what happened” on Tuesday when a jury found Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in 1996 in New York and that he was liable for battery and defamation after a civil trial.
Langella’s daughter, Isabella, who is an independent and shopping around for the most conservative Republican candidate, hoped that “people stick to his ideas and his policies instead of what happened 20 years ago.”
Another attendee, Al Peel, hoped to get a question to Trump about his own ideas on how to help homeless veterans. He also wanted the former president to tone down his wild antics and focus instead on policies.
“If he could keep off his Twitter account and all his fingers off the keyboard – he’d be a lot more popular," he said.“I think he’s Bozo the Clown, OK. But I love his results," he added.
Across the road, a crowd of students held up signs reading “love Trumps hate” and “nobody is above the law,” while chanting “You’re abhorrent, you’re broke, you lost the popular vote.”
More about the town hall location: Saint Anselm College has its own fabled history in presidential campaigns. Republican Richard Nixon made it his first stop in his successful 1968 bid for the presidency. Pretty much every one who is anyone in presidential politics has visited — from Ronald Reagan, both presidents Bush, Trump and Bernie Sanders.
The Benedictine liberal arts college hosted a fiery Democratic presidential debate days before the 2008 primary that saw Hillary Clinton win a comeback victory after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses — though it was a false dawn for the then New York senator’s campaign.
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