TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) – As Donald Trump railed against immigrants in the Rust Belt on Saturday afternoon, his supporters in the Deep South had turned his earlier broadsides into a rallying cry over a college football game as they prepared for the former president’s visit later in the evening .

“You have to take these people back to where they came from,” Trump said in Wisconsin, as the Republican presidential candidate refocused on Springfield, Ohio, which has been roiled by false claims he amplified that Haitian immigrants are stealing and “eating” the dogs. ..eat the cats” from the neighbors’ houses.

“You have no choice,” Trump continued. ‘You’re going to lose your culture. You are going to lose your country.”

Many University of Alabama fans, anticipating Trump’s visit to their campus for a showdown between the No. 4 Crimson Tide and the No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs, wore stickers and buttons that read: “They’re eating the Dawgs! ” They broke out into random chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” during the day, a preview of the electrifying welcome he received early in the second quarter as he sat in a 40-yard suite hosted by a wealthy member of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida .

Trump’s populist nationalism relies heavily on his dark portrayal of America as a failing nation abused by elites and overrun by black and brown immigrants. But his supporters, especially white cultural conservatives, hear in that rhetoric an optimistic patriotism, encapsulated in the slogan on his movement’s ubiquitous red hats: “Make America Great Again.”

That was the assessment of Shane Walsh, a 52-year-old businessman from Austin, Texas. Walsh and his family decorated their tent on University Square with a Trump 2024 flag and made a professional sign with the newly popular message predicting that the Alabama football team would “eat the Dawgs.”

For Walsh, the sign was not about immigration or the specifics of Trump’s showmanship, exaggerations and untruths.

“I don’t necessarily like him as a person,” Walsh said. “But I think Washington is broken, and it’s both parties’ fault — and Trump is the kind of man who stands up. He is many things, but weak is not one of them. He is an optimistic man; he just makes you believe that if he’s in charge, we’ll be fine.”

The idea for the sign, he said, came from a meme he showed to his wife. “I thought it was funny,” he said.

Katie Yates, a 47-year-old from Hoover, Alabama, had the same experience with her life-size cutout of the former president. She was stopped repeatedly on her way to her family’s usual tent. Trump’s likeness would join Elvis, “who is always an Alabama fan at our tailgate,” Yates said.

“I’m such a fan of Trump,” she said, adding that she couldn’t understand why not every American was.

Yates said nothing derogatory about Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, but instead simply complained that she couldn’t stay for the game and watched as Trump was recognized by the stadium public address system and raised his fist large video screens in the four stadiums. corners of Bryant-Denny Stadium.

That moment came with 12:24 left in the second quarter, shortly after Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe ran up the right sideline, on Trump’s side, to give the Crimson Tide an eye-popping 28-0 lead over the Vegas favorites. Bulldogs.

Trump did not respond to Milroe’s lashing out, perhaps because he recognized that Georgia, not exactly Republican Alabama, is an important battleground in his fight against Harris. But when “the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump” was introduced to the packed crowd of more than 100,000 fans — all but a few thousand in crimson clothing — Trump smiled broadly and pumped his fist, as he had done on stage. in July after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear and bloodied his face.

The crowd roared its approval, raising cellphone cameras and their crimson and white pompoms toward Trump’s suite, where he stood behind the ballistic glass that has become a hallmark after two assassination attempts. A bit of boos and a few outstretched middle fingers broke the Trumpian decorum, but they gave in to more chants of, “USA! USA! USA!”

Indeed, not everyone on campus was enthusiastic.

“There is, I think, a silent majority among students who don’t support Trump,” argued Braden Vick, chairman of the Alabama chapter of College Democrats. Vick pointed to the recent election when Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden in 2020, far outperformed their statewide numbers in districts around campus.

“We have a great atmosphere for a top-five matchup between these two teams, with playoff and championship implications,” Vick said, “and it’s just a shame that Donald Trump has to try to ruin it with his selfishness .”

Trump came as a guest of businessman Ric Mayers Jr. from Alabama, member of Mar-a-Lago. Mayers said in an interview before the game that he invited Trump so he could enjoy a warm welcome. And, as Mayers noted, Trump is a longtime sports fan. He tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and helped create a competing league instead. And he attended several college games as president, including a national championship game between Alabama and Georgia.

Mayers also invited Alabama Sens. Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville out. Britt, a former student government president in Alabama, delivered the Republican response to Biden’s final State of the Union address, drawing rebukes after she used a debunked story about human trafficking to echo Trump’s warnings about migrants. Tuberville, the former head football coach of Alabama’s archrival Auburn University, is an avid Trump supporter.

The politicians in the suite were joined by musicians Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. Herschel Walker, a Georgia football icon and failed 2022 Senate candidate, traveled to the game in Trump’s motorcade.

Fences surrounded parts of the stadium, with dozens of metal detectors and tents forming a security perimeter beyond the usual footprint. The sisters of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority showed their safety wristbands before being allowed to go to their sorority house right next to the stadium. Bomb-sniffing dogs stopped catering trucks transporting food. Hundreds of TSA agents spread out to perform a potentially unpopular task: imposing airport-level screening for every ticket holder.

But what seemed to matter most was the chance for a friendly home crowd to cheer Trump the same way they cheered the Crimson Tide, unbothered by anything he said in Wisconsin or anywhere else as he delivered an increasingly obscure closing argument loved.

“College football fans can get emotional and crazy about their team,” says Shane Walsh. “And that goes for Trump supporters too.”

They didn’t even mind that Trump’s tie wasn’t crimson. It was Georgia red.