Former President Donald Trump was met with loud boos as he arrived at Williams-Brice Stadium in South Carolina on Saturday ahead of the Palmetto Bowl.
Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential primary, was in Columbia to watch the Palmetto Bowl college football game between the University of South Carolina’s Gamecocks and Clemson University’s Tigers.
The former president remains a popular figure in South Carolina, a state where he beat President Joe Biden by 12 points in 2020. South Carolina is a key early voting state, and Trump has maintained a commanding lead in polls over his GOP rivals, including former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
Haley, a Clemson alumna and trustee who was twice elected the state’s governor, did not attend the annual rivalry football game, according to local media reports.
The former president was invited to watch the football game at the request of Governor Henry McMaster, who became Haley’s successor after Trump named her U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2017
The MAGA leader was greeted with audible boos as his black SUV was arriving at Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday, according to video clips shared on X, formerly Twitter. In a minute-long clip, posted by Beth Hoole, a director for local station WHNS, the crowd’s jeers can be heard roughly 10 seconds in.
Hoole’s video was reshared on X by 11Alive journalist Cody Alcorn, who called it an “explicit welcome.”
