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Trump Mocks Opponents in South Carolina

Campaigning in South Carolina, Donald J. Trump mocked some of his fellow Republican candidates, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, who he congratulated for polling at 4% in his home state.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date August 27, 2015. Photo by Travis Dove for The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Donald J. Trump said in an interview on Thursday that he would soon decide whether to sign a pledge to support the ultimate Republican presidential nominee, something the South Carolina Republican Party is requiring to compete in the state’s critical primary.

Mr. Trump, the only one of 10 Republican candidates in a Fox News debate this month who refused to rule out a third-party bid, said that he expected his showing in polls to “go up 10 or 15 percent” if he signs the pledge. He added that if he did sign but lost the nomination, he would not run as an independent, a concern among many Republicans.

“I don’t make commitments and break them,” Mr. Trump said after speaking at an event here hosted by local chambers of commerce. If he violates the contract, he said, “they should sue. I would go before the court and say, ‘I’m guilty.’ ”

Disputing a Huffington Post report that suggested he was assuring local party leaders that he would sign the pledge, he insisted, “I haven’t told anybody that.”

Photo

Deborah Masters of Townville, S.C., holds a Donald Trump doll before a campaign rally on Thursday.Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times

South Carolina, the first Southern state to hold a primary next year, appears to like what it sees in Mr. Trump. A poll this week had him far ahead of his closest competitor, prompting what his aides said was a new demand that he sign the pledge.

Ed McMullen, a co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s South Carolina campaign, said that the party had sent its news release on a day when Mr. Trump was shown crushing his opposition, but that “we’re not going to be taken off message.”

That message is essentially that Mr. Trump is a winner, a theme the candidate took up in meandering but crowd-pleasing remarks before about 1,400 people.

Mr. Trump began by hailing the crowd as part of the new “silent majority.”

He also contrasted the showing at his event with the turnout of a few hundred at a similar event this summer for Jeb Bush, a former Republican governor of Florida and a favorite Trump target.

About 700 chamber members showed up for the Trump event but so did another 700 or so voters who paid $35 a plate “because the Trump people wanted to open it up,” said Ben Haskew, the president of the Greenville Chamber of Commerce.

To the crowd’s delight, Mr. Trump offered a critical commentary on an article in The New York Times describing the adversarial view of him held by the Spanish-language news media. He then tossed the paper into the crowd.

At another point, he invited the wife of a local elected official on stage to yank his hair (“I don’t wear a toupee, it’s my hair,” he said) and mocked Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina lawmaker who is also running for president, for how little support he is getting.

Mr. Graham did not respond to the taunt. “My problems with Mr. Trump go to the substance of what he says,” he said in a statement.

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Graphic: Who’s Winning the G.O.P. Campaign?

Though he spoke of how “beautiful” the wall he would build on the Mexican border would be, Mr. Trump said nothing specific about what he would do as president.

He did, however, compare the beauty of the Qatar airport with that of La Guardia Airport in New York.

“I’m thinking La Guardia, oy yoy yoy,” he said to the slightly bewildered crowd.

Despite the idiosyncratic style, Mr. Trump has found strong support in the northern part of South Carolina, a surprise, according to Jim Merrill, Mr. Trump’s state director and a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

“You would logically think it would be along the coast, just because there are so many people here that have moved here from other places to Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach,” Mr. Merrill said.

To harness this growing support, the Trump campaign has recently added staff members in the state.

James Epley, one of the new staff members, worked here in 2012 for Newt Gingrich, who won the state primary with 40 percent of the vote. Nancy Mace, another person brought on by the campaign, was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel and lost in a primary last year to Mr. Graham.

Speaking with reporters after the rally, Mr. Trump tried to explain his use of the term “silent majority” to describe his supporters.

“So you have a silent majority in this country that feels abused, that feels forgotten, that feels mistreated, and it’s a term that hasn’t been brought up in years as you know,” Mr. Trump said. “People haven’t heard that term in many years and it’s interesting as to why, there are all different reasons. But I think it is a very descriptive term.”

The term was made famous by Richard M. Nixon when he was president. It is regarded by many historians as an appeal to white voters who believed that the civil rights and antiwar movement had gone too far.

But Mr. Trump, whose former political adviser, Roger Stone, was a Nixon acolyte, said that he was not aware of any such echo.

“I’m not worried about it,” he said. “It’s a very descriptive term. I’m just bringing it to modern day.

“There is no better term for what’s happening.”

Mr. Trump said in the interview that for him “silent majority” had no racial undertones, and that he meant only the Republicans who might have voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 but instead sat out the election.

The crowd at the chamber event was anything but quiet, often applauding Mr. Trump’s rollicking version of a stump speech.

Jim Yates, 68, of Laurens, wore a Trump sticker on a sombrero he had bought for the event because he approved of the candidate’s plan to build a wall “to stop not only the Mexicans but other foreigners.”

Dan Heltness, a retired small-business man from Greenville, said he agreed with a lot of what Mr. Trump said and was drawn to the fact that Mr. Trump “doesn’t take guff from anybody, including the Hispanic reporter.” This was in reference to Jorge Ramos, the Univision news anchor, who Mr. Trump criticized from the stage.

Mr. Trump ejected Mr. Ramos from a recent event for asking a question without being called on, before inviting him back.

But Mr. Heltness also said that Mr. Trump’s willingness to speak his mind no matter what “is also a little scary.”

“I’m old enough to have seen a few of these,” said Mr. Heltness, 72. “It’s an amazing thing to watch and a remarkable journey. But it also might end remarkably bad.”

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