Trump’s walk across USC’s Williams-Brice football field was Gov. Henry McMaster’s doing By Nick Reynolds COLUMBIA — Former President Donald Trump’s halftime walk across the field at South Carolina’s Williams-Brice Stadium came thanks to the wishes of close ally Gov. Henry McMaster.
A USC spokesman confirmed it was at McMaster’s behest that Trump got access onto the school’s turf at last weekend’s USC Gamecocks-Clemson Tigers game with 80,000 people in attendance.
It was the type of exposure a candidate can only dream of, and one where yells of support outweighed the boos.
“The governor requested to come out to the field and requested to bring his guest,” university spokesman Jeff Stensland told The Post and Courier on Nov. 27.
University officials said the appearance prompted both positive and negative feedback for the school, including questions of whether the decision to feature a divisive political figure during an active campaign and an NCAA game was proper.
“Any time there’s a political person being recognized, people have strong opinions on both sides, and so we’ve seen that,” Stensland said.
Trump, who watched the game alongside McMaster and other state Trump supporters from inside a stadium suite, waved to the crowd as he strode toward the midfield line, his smiling face splashed across the 11th-largest video screen in college football.
Video feed of the walk was not included on the 70 million subscriber SEC Network that carried the game, but there was a snippet aired that showed Trump in attendance.
Multiple members of the USC Board of Trustees either could not be reached for comment or declined comment when contacted by The Post and Courier about the Trump staging.
McMaster’s office defended the decision, saying it fit within a longstanding schedule of presidential visits to USC.
“South Carolina’s universities, colleges and HBCUs have a well-documented bipartisan tradition and history of welcoming current and former presidents, vice presidents and presidential candidates to their campuses for all kinds of events, including presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” Brandon Charochak, a spokesman for the governor, said.
“Governor McMaster appreciates the important role South Carolina plays in the presidential primary nomination process and the enthusiasm it generates — as was on display at Williams-Brice Stadium last Saturday night,” he added.
Trump’s stadium visit was a bit different. Biden, Bush and Reagan offered commencement addresses, though just one — Reagan, who delivered his speech in September 1983 — was in the throes of a primary, and he was more or less unopposed.
Though Obama famously used Williams-Brice for a 2007 Democratic primary rally with television personality Oprah Winfrey, it was specified as such and did not take place during a football game.
And while Ford visited midfield for the Gamecocks’ Oct. 23, 1976, matchup against a nationally ranked Notre Dame team weeks before election day against popular Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter, he was still president at the time and would go on to lose the Palmetto State in a landslide.
It’s unclear how much interaction university officials had with the Trump camp. According to the Trump campaign, he was seated with McMaster in a member of the Board of Trustees’ box with several Republican Party officials, though it is unclear whose it was.
After the game, some students expressed disappointment in the decision to host him.
Kyle Brantley, vice president of USC’s College Democrats and a regular attendee of Gamecocks football games, said the group has begun a student body poll gauging feelings about Trump’s attendance. He plans to write a disapproving letter to the administration about how the Republican presidential primary leader was allowed ground access.
“With the former president standing on our field for the amount of time he did, it shows that the university would rather open themselves up to division and to evil rhetoric instead of what we promote ourselves to be through the Carolinian Creed, which is that we will be respectful to whomever has a difference with us,” Brantley said.
Other student-fans were exuberant.
“We saw Donnie, we saw Donnie,” one student was heard yelling to her friends during the visit.
One football fan who saw an opening in Trump’s attendance was Clemson graduate and leading GOP rival for the Republican president nomination, former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley.
At a Nov. 27 campaign rally in Bluffton, Halley told the crowd, “How did it work out for the Gamecocks having Trump there? Not so lucky for the Gamecocks. I’m just sayin’, I’m just sayin,′ ” she said, while respectfully noting that her rally was being held at the USC-Beaufort Campus.
Clemson won the Palmetto Bowl 16-7.
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