Amid a thrift shop, an auto repair shop, the City of Manchester Department of Public Works, and a Dunkin Donuts, former President Donald Trump kicked off the opening of his campaign headquarters in New Hampshire earlier Tuesday afternoon.
To people like Libby DePiero, who traveled all the way from Connecticut for the event, Trump’s chosen location goes along with what she feels is the most appealing about him.
“It’s just another example that he’s the people’s president,” DePiero, a member of the motorcycle group Born To Ride For Donald Trump, told The Epoch Times.
DePiero, who has attended 71 Trump rallies since the first time the MAGA candidate ran for president, said she credits Trump with “giving us back America” after President Barack Obama tried to globalize the country.
“Now we need for Trump to take America back from Biden,” she said.
Others in the crowd identified themselves as first-time Trump voters, including Roberta Gingras, owner of the thrift shop adjacent to Trump’s new headquarters in Manchester.
Gingras said she is voting for the first time ever in a presidential campaign. She said she was actually inspired by President Joe Biden.
“With Biden tripping, falling, stumbling on his words, I just can’t bear any more embarrassment from him as an American,” she said. She said she’s definitely voting for Trump.
Derek Arnold, who lives in nearby Derry, New Hampshire, said he didn’t vote in the past elections in which Trump ran because he was “always listening to fake news.”
“When I finally started doing my own independent research into Trump, I realized he was actually a good president.”
Amanda Gingras, Roberta Gingras’s daughter, said she voted for Hillary Clinton the first time Trump ran and didn’t vote in the second election.
Like her mother, Amanda said that Biden has cured her from voting Democrat.
Trump gave a private and brief address to VIP ticket holders inside the manufactured-style building on Lincoln Street that now officially houses his New Hampshire headquarters.
The street was lined with Secret Service and local and state police, with security seeming tighter than usual at Trump appearances.
It was the first time Trump was back in New Hampshire since he was indicted on 37 felony charges brought against him by the United States on allegations he unlawfully kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Miami, Florida.
His return to New Hampshire was not without controversy.
Earlier in the day, he spoke at the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women 76th Annual Lilac Luncheon, a historic shindig the group bills as the “largest grassroots fundraiser” of Republican women.
The group issued a blistering statement condemning Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for scheduling a town hall event in the Granite State at the same time Trump was scheduled to speak at the event.
“In twenty-five years of running Republican events in New Hampshire, including many Lilac Luncheons, it has always been a New Hampshire hallmark to be considerate when scheduling events. To have a candidate come in and district from the most special event NHFRW holds in the year is unprecedented,” said Events Director Christine Peters.
Some Republican women were so angry about the organization’s criticism that they resigned, including Kate Day, who is part of DeSantis’s leadership team in New Hampshire.
“Negative statements against any candidate violates our organization’s leadership,” Day said in announcing her resignation over the matter.
Some women at Trump’s headquarters opening said they wouldn’t consider voting for anyone else but Trump.
Brandishing a shirt “Women For Trump,” Nicole Coles, who traveled from Gloucester, Massachusetts, for his campaign headquarters opening, told The Epoch Times she believes Trump is the only Republican candidate “with a true backbone” to stand against what she called the indoctrination of America.
Coles said her primary concerns are the woke ideology in schools, Second Amendment rights, and growing censorship by the Biden administration. “We need him back in the White House,” she said, “or America is going to fold.”
Mary Kreider, who came up from Plymouth, Massachusetts, to attend the opening of Trump’s New Hampshire headquarters, told The Epoch Times that the shirt she was wearing speaks for what her concerns are.
Her shirt had TRUMP spelled vertically with each letter in Trump’s name spelling out “Truth Really Upsets Most People.”
“He can’t be bought,” said Kreider. “He’s not a puppet.”
Like others, Kreider said while she was “honestly” a bit taken back at first by the area Trump chose for his campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, she said she realized it fits him perfectly.
“There’s something for everyone,” she said.
Long nicknamed the Queen City, Manchester is an across-the-board representation of working-class America, with freight trains, riverfront mills, a minor league baseball team, and its share of crimes. It has also had some modern twists.
In 2016, Manchester was named one of the Queerest Cities in America.
