Since Donald Trump became president last month, Robert Rabon says his company selling mobile homes in Conway, South Carolina, is booming — and he credits Trump. "I've sold 50 mobile homes since the beginning of the year because the people feel good about the country, they feel excited about it again."

He expects to pay less for insurance when the Affordable Care Act is repealed and says his friends are hurting because of high fees and deductibles; the owner of a local barbecue restaurant is paying $3,200 per month because he has diabetes, Rabon said. He thinks taxes will drop because he won't have to "pay for all these other people who have never worked and sit on their butts for their whole lives," even though Trump has resisted some calls to rein in entitlement spending.


"If Hillary Clinton had won, I was going to shut down my business. I really was," Rabon said. "We just had to have a change after the last eight years. We have a president who's pro-America, not anti-America. I just thought Barack Obama hated America. He wanted to do everything he could do to destroy America."

Trump travels to South Carolina Friday, ostensibly for the rollout of Boeing’s new 787-10 Dreamliner jet, but it will probably be just as much an ego boost for a president pummeled by Washington.

Not only will Trump likely hear rapturous applause as he crows about American-made products, but it will also give him a chance to revel in his victory — one of his favorite topics. He won 55 percent of South Carolina’s vote to Clinton’s 41 percent in the general election, and about 32 percent of the primary tally, besting his nearest rival by 10 points.

It will be a welcome respite for Trump, who has largely been holed up in the White House, careening from one controversy to the next during his first month in office. In a stunning sign of his frustration, Trump unloaded on the “dishonest media” during an hour-plus-long news conference on Thursday for not giving him the credit his administration deserves. And while Trump cited a recent Rasmussen poll during the news conference that shows his approval rating at 55 percent, the average has hovered more around 46 percent — a historic low for a new president.

But in South Carolina, he’s getting rave reviews.

Interviews with lawmakers, activists and political observers in the state indicate they aren't nearly as concerned about his erratic phone calls with foreign leaders, his Twitter attacks on senators, celebrities and others, his shifting and sometimes uninformed opinions on issues, his campaign's questionable ties to Russia, and his administration's struggles to fill the government and effectively implement his policy ideas.

The biggest problem, Republicans here say, is the Charleston event is private and they all can't get in. "The people who supported him support him more than ever," said Joel Sawyer, a Columbia consultant with deep ties across the state.

Trump has told allies it is important to be among "my people" and that the "dishonest" news media needed to see his support. After South Carolina, he will head to Florida for a campaign rally, even though his reelection bid is four years away.

That workers at the Boeing plant Trump is visiting overwhelmingly rejected an attempt this week to unionize has further energized Trump's supporters, say Cindy Costa, a Lowcountry Republican and national committeewoman. "Unions have served their purpose and are no longer needed," she said. "They protect lazy people and keep them hired when they need to be fired. You have these union bosses and criminal elements that run unions, and I think the president would agree with me." Trump recently met with unions in the Oval Office and often dealt with them as a New York real estate mogul.

During the campaign, religious conservatives, which dominate the state, were skeptical about Trump, a thrice-married, philandering billionaire. Now, they believe he will stand up against abortion and for the rights of churches.

South Carolina Republicans have also learned to love the unilateral power of the presidency. Republicans, Sawyer said, hated President Obama's executive orders and called them "overreach" but now embrace Trump's orders. Consistency, he joked recently on Twitter, is so 2012. While Trump’s executive orders were widely derided in Washington for being vague, symbolic and ill-crafted, supporters saw them as proof he would get to work immediately.

While South Carolina Republicans derided Obama for playing golf, Trump's trips to the course don't seem to bother them. "He is working his butt off," Rabon, a lifelong Republican who had never attended an inauguration before Trump's, said. "He will figure it out but he is getting battered at every turn."

Supporters also say they liked his Cabinet choices, which they deemed conservative. Asked about various allegations that have swirled around nominees, from not paying taxes to domestic abuse allegations, supporters shrugged and in some cases, blamed the media. "These are people who know the world, not the academics that Obama appointed. None of these people were based on identity politics. They were just the best people for the jobs," said Larry Kobrovsky, chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party. "In the media, you have this relentless over-the-top hysteria. No matter what he does, the media says he's terrible. Every time he opens his mouth, he's the worst in the world. You just learn to discount it."

Allegations about Russia are largely overblown, too, his supporters say, and are an attempt to delegitimize his victory. They largely agree with Trump on the executive order travel ban that has since been frozen by the courts. "He was smacked down by an activist judge," Sawyer said, of how Trump's supporters see it.

And whereas many inside the Beltway are cringing at Trump’s rhetoric, his impolitic or unpolished remarks are expected in South Carolina. "You hear people saying they wish he wouldn't tweet, but I think 98 percent of the people here think he's doing great," Costa said. "I wish some of his tweets were better crafted and had a better message, but I'm in politics. They're not being written for me."

Streets remain lined with Trump signs in Horry County, a conservative bastion on the northeast coast of the state. Billboards have kept his face along the interstate. While some in Washington joke about his impeachment, many here say they are looking forward to Trump's second term.

"They basically say, we sent him to shake things up in Washington; is he doing that?" said Rep. Mark Sanford, a Charleston Republican who has criticized the president. "And they basically think yes. A lot of the things that are causing grave concern among some in Washington are not noticed by supporters at home. They don't care about the ins and outs."

He is not without his opponents or problems here. In some of the state's bigger cities — like Charleston and Greenville — an influx of Fortune 500 companies have brought an influx of Democrats who want to mount protests against Trump in South Carolina, said Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic state party. He says Trump is alienating every Democrat in the state and even some who voted for him, and he is heartened by polls in other states that show Trump's popularity declining. "He's in the 30s in Michigan now," Harrison said.

Harrison also said Republicans would be howling if accusations swirled that Clinton's campaign worked covertly with Russian officials during the election. The double standard is infuriating, he said, and watching Republicans defend Trump amid chaos is difficult to swallow. "I have never seen anything like this," he said.

Trump could have other issues, Sanford and some critics say. Sanford expects protests at his town hall this weekend. They worry about Trump's anti-free trade policies hurting the state, particularly the large port in Charleston near where Trump is appearing. If the economy doesn't turn around, and he can't bring jobs back to the faded mill towns that dot the interstate between booming cities, people could tire of him. "The anti-trade talk could be a real double-edge sword — if some of that stuff took hold and trade barriers begin to go up around the world and it hurts companies like Boeing, that will have a consequence," Sanford said. "People are really expecting the economy to boom."

And if it was ever substantiated that Russians were paid to help him win the presidency, Sanford said that would hurt Trump. Still, Harrison seemed unsure of how many people would actually show up to the protests — in a nearby parking lot — given that South Carolina ain't Michigan. "I think there will be a number of people," he said.

Protests may bother Trump, who has grown privately upset when detractors greet him. But they won't bother many of his supporters, who universally say the protests make them like him more. Kobrovsky, the Charleston Republican, said watching the protests against Betsy DeVos, the new education secretary, and the "crazies in Wisconsin and Michigan" made him glad Trump is in office and "those people were not." Rabon said the protesters were paid by George Soros — an unsubstantiated claim.

"Republicans work and raise families. They aren't going to be out in the streets or at rallies during the day,” Kobrovsky said. “If you see people on the other side, they don't. They've never had so much fun in their life doing these protests.”

Costa said Democrats are acting wildly inappropriate when it comes to Trump. "He's being obstructed by the Democrats. They are hateful. They are mean-spirited. They are just made that way. I don't even understand how their brains work. I don't see how they can't understand the obvious. Their minds are much different than ours," she said.

Sawyer and other longtime political observers in South Carolina say the partisan division worries them because Trump’s supporters and detractors don't seem to care about the facts. Both Democrats and Republicans should keep an open mind to Trump, he said, and be willing to change positions from he is "the greatest president ever" to the "end of Western civilization as we know it."

"Regardless what you think of Donald Trump, we should as human beings hold open the possibility that our minds could be changed," he said. "If we're determined as an electorate to think what we think, facts be damned, our country is screwed."

Costa said there is a way Trump could lose support in South Carolina. "If he goes out and mass murders people, I think he'd lose support. But that's not going to happen," she said.

