MAGA fanatics in North Carolina are not convinced that Vice President Kamala Harris’ entry into the 2024 race will affect the results in November.
The Democratic Party is praising the “boost of enthusiasm” after President Joe Biden stepped aside and Harris took over his campaign on Sunday. But Donald Trump’s biggest supporters think it’s all a ruse.
Democrats are “very quiet” in North Carolina, 61-year-old surgical nurse Neal Morris told DailyMail.com at Trump’s rally on Wednesday.
Trump’s rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the first since Biden announced he was ending his re-election campaign and endorsing his No. 2 candidate. It is also only the second since the former president was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt at his event in Butler, Pennsylvania earlier in July.
Jennifer Braga, 32, a cleaning company owner in Indian Trail, North Carolina, and originally from Brazil, believes Democrats will have no choice but to rally behind Harris in November, saying, “They’ve painted themselves into a corner.”
Jennifer Braga, 32, and her husband Wesley Braga, 37, attend a Trump rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday. Jennifer told DailyMail.com that Kamala Harris taking over from Joe Biden ‘hasn’t changed anything because the Republican Party is really united’
North Carolina is a must-win state in 2024 and Democrats have turned their attention there to try and secure victory in November.
In 2016, Trump won North Carolina by 3.6 percent, and in 2020 his lead narrowed, but he still beat Biden there by 1.3 percent. Democrats believe North Carolina is a red battleground they can capture in 2024, and they are working overtime to influence voters there.
The North Carolina Democratic Party plans to double its staff in the next two weeks, a spokesperson confirmed to DailyMail.com. And the party decided to start expanding its staff six months earlier than in previous election cycles.
But Trump voters in the Tar Heel State agree with the former president that Harris’ candidacy does not change the state of the race.
According to Morris, Harris is just “another puppet” who will carry out the same agenda Biden has proposed.
“Nothing has changed because the Republican Party is a truly united party,” said Braga, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020.
A 24-year-old bartender from Charlotte told DailyMail.com that she and other Republicans “are not worried about Kamala taking over from Joe.”
Trump said in a phone call Tuesday that the change of candidates did not frighten him, saying her 2020 presidential campaign imploded.
“If she’s campaigning like that now, and it’s only going to get harder, even though she’s getting a lot of support from the fake news, there’s no doubt about that,” he told reporters during a briefing.
“But if she campaigns like she did then, I suspect she won’t be as tough.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is the de facto Democratic Party nominee this week after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race on Sunday
In 2020, Harris ran a deeply unpopular primary campaign against about a dozen other Democrats, including incumbent Joe Biden.
She consistently polled around 2 percent or below in the crowded field and was branded unlikable by voters and political pundits.
More broadly, Trump fans believe Harris will only bring “more of the same” to Biden’s presidency as the past four years — and they’re not happy about it.
Braga said the cost of cleaning supplies and other operational expenses to run her small business has tripled under Biden.
And Morris said he should have retired two years ago, when he was 59, but was forced to continue working as a member of the “middle class.”