President Trump used a Friday night rally in Myrtle Beach to make his closing argument for Sen. Darline Graham ahead of Tuesday’s runoff, weaving a Supreme Court order on his White House ballroom project, a recitation of “The Snake,” and attacks on Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan, Florida, and Texas into a broader case that the 2026 midterms amount to a choice between “America First” and what he called Democratic “communism.” Along the way, he repeated several claims — a $19.2 trillion investment figure, “11,888 murderers” let in under President Biden, and 1,200 miles of new border wall — that independent data does not support, while accurately touting the renaming of Joint Base Charleston for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and correctly noting the Supreme Court had, hours earlier, allowed ballroom construction to continue.
South Carolina’s Grand Strand hosted a full-throttle campaign rally on August 21, 2026, as President Donald Trump traveled to Myrtle Beach four days before the state’s Republican Senate runoff. The event doubled as a tribute to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose sister and appointed successor, Sen. Darline Graham, is fighting to keep the seat in a runoff against Rep. Ralph Norman on August 25. What follows is the most complete public accounting of what was said — and how it holds up. Assistance from Claude AI.
Who Spoke
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Donald Trump | President of the United States |
| Darline Graham (Nordone) | U.S. Senator (R-S.C.); appointed July 2026 to fill her late brother Lindsey Graham’s seat; candidate in the Aug. 25 special primary runoff |
| Tim Scott | U.S. Senator (R-S.C.); chair, National Republican Senatorial Committee |
| John Barrasso | U.S. Senator (R-Wyo.) |
| Russell Fry | U.S. Representative (R-S.C., 7th District); third-place finisher in the Aug. 11 special primary |
| Karoline Leavitt | White House Press Secretary |
Also recognized from the stage (non-speaking): Gov. Henry McMaster (R-S.C.); S.C. House Speaker Murrell Smith; Jenny Honeycutt, candidate for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District; Cody Simpson, candidate for S.C. Commissioner of Agriculture; and Darline Graham’s husband, Larry Nordone, and family.
Setting the Scene: A South Carolina Homecoming Shadowed by Loss
The rally’s emotional center was a death barely six weeks old. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a fixture of South Carolina politics since 1995, died suddenly on July 11 or 12, 2026, of an aortic dissection (NPR, 2026). Gov. Henry McMaster, at Trump’s public urging, appointed Graham’s younger sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to finish the term — making her the first woman to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate (Office of the Governor of South Carolina, 2026). She was sworn in July 14 and announced days later that she would run for a full term.
Fact check: Trump’s account of his sister’s death and Darline’s appointment — “when her beloved brother, Lindsey, passed away, unexpectedly” — is ✅ accurate and matches the timeline reported by South Carolina’s governor’s office and national outlets (NPR, 2026; Office of the Governor of South Carolina, 2026).
Because none of the ten Republicans on the August 11 special-primary ballot cleared 50%, Graham and Rep. Ralph Norman advanced to an August 25 runoff — the race Trump was in Myrtle Beach to influence (Ballotpedia, 2026; WBTV, 2026). Notably, Trump never mentioned Norman by name during the speech, referring only to unnamed opponents who “want Darline to lose.”
Context box — how the runoff works: South Carolina requires a candidate to win a majority, not just a plurality, in a special primary. Graham took about 33% of the vote on August 11 to Norman’s 24%; because neither cleared 50%, the top two advance to a head-to-head runoff (Ballotpedia, 2026). The winner faces Democrat Annie Andrews in the November 3 general election for the final two years of Lindsey Graham’s term.
Trump also praised Rep. Russell Fry, who placed third in the August 11 primary with about 19.6% of the vote, thanking him for a “tremendous roadway project” and recalling that he had endorsed Fry in a past race. Trump’s reference to putting Fry up against “a certain gentleman who wasn’t very good” is a callback to Fry’s successful 2022 primary challenge to then-Rep. Tom Rice, one of ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6 — background the speech didn’t spell out for listeners unfamiliar with the history.
On Darline Graham’s résumé, Trump said she “led an important state agency with 130 employees” and “a $90 million budget” and “served on the South Carolina Workforce Development Board.” Fact check: This is ✅ largely accurate, though the “important state agency” is specifically the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, which Graham has led as commissioner since 2019; her own campaign and a recent interview corroborate the 130-employee, $90 million figures (Washington Reporter, 2026; Grenier, 2026). Her broader employment background includes work at South Carolina’s vocational rehabilitation and workforce agencies, though “Workforce Development Board” as a specific title wasn’t independently confirmed in campaign materials reviewed for this piece.
Breaking News: The Supreme Court’s Ballroom Order
The speech’s biggest news hook landed early. Trump told the crowd that “today we just learned” the Supreme Court had ruled on his White House ballroom project, calling it a “military/ballroom” complex “so vital for national security” that will be “the greatest of its kind anywhere that’s ever been built.”
Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading in framing, though the underlying event is real. Hours before the rally, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a brief administrative stay — not a full Supreme Court ruling on the merits — pausing a lower-court injunction that would have halted above-ground construction on the 90,000-square-foot ballroom (CNBC, 2026; SCOTUSblog, 2026). The order explicitly “doesn’t address the legality of the project,” which two lower courts have separately found the administration is pursuing without congressional authorization, and simply buys the full Court more time to decide whether to extend the pause (CNN, 2026; SCOTUSblog, 2026). Trump’s own social media statement, cited by CNN, similarly claimed a “Decision of the United States Supreme Court” and asserted the project was “under budget and ahead of schedule” — a framing that goes beyond what the one-sentence order actually decided (CNN, 2026).
Context box — what’s actually happening at the White House: The Trump administration demolished the East Wing in 2025 to build the ballroom without formally notifying Congress, prompting a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled in March 2026 that construction must stop without congressional approval, writing that “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.” Estimates of the project’s cost have ranged from $250 million to more than $400 million (CNBC, 2026; SCOTUSblog, 2026).
Trump also claimed the East Room “seats 88 people” and that the country has wanted a ballroom “for over 150 years” while the military has sought one “for 100 years” — historical framing that could not be independently verified for this piece and is presented here as the president’s own characterization (ℹ️ unverifiable).
The Economy: Tariffs, “$19.2 Trillion,” and Egg Prices
Trump devoted a long stretch of the speech to economic claims, anchored by his signature line: “Tariffs — it’s my all-time favorite word.”
On investment: Trump said “$19.2 trillion is being invested right now in the United States more than any country at any time by many, many times,” a figure he has repeated in various forms since mid-2026 (The Hawk, 2026). Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading. The $19.2 trillion figure traces to the Commerce Department, but independent analysts note that most of it reflects domestic investment and pre-existing economic trends rather than new activity attributable to Trump’s policies — only roughly $6 trillion of the White House’s own tally is attributed to foreign investment (American Enterprise Institute, 2026). CBS News found that federal data on actual corporate investment spending (as opposed to announced, non-binding “commitments”) shows only modest growth over the prior year, and that some White House-cited deals — including a $200 billion Micron investment — were originally announced and partly funded under the Biden administration (CBS News, 2026).
On eggs and beef: Trump said egg prices, which he claimed were “up four or five times higher” when he took office, have come down, and that beef prices are “coming down very rapidly.” These are directional claims about ongoing price trends that were not independently verified for this article and are presented as the president’s own assertion (ℹ️ unverifiable without contemporaneous USDA data).
On drug prices: Trump said he has “cut drug prices 60, 70, 80, and even 90%” through his “Most Favored Nation” pricing deals. Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading as a general statement, though accurate for specific drugs. The administration has reached voluntary Most Favored Nation pricing agreements with 17 pharmaceutical manufacturers covering roughly 86% of the branded drug market, and some individual medications — GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, certain cholesterol treatments — have seen list-price cuts in the 50–90% range (The White House, 2026). But overall prescription drug prices are down a far more modest 3.9% since Trump took office, according to the same administration’s own figures, and independent health-policy analysts note that other factors — including a Biden-era law allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices — are likely contributing as well (PBS News, 2026).
On tax cuts: Trump’s claims about “no tax on tips,” “no tax on overtime,” “no tax on Social Security,” and a new deduction for interest on U.S.-made car loans refer to real provisions of the tax-and-spending law signed in 2025, commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Fact check: ✅ Accurate that these provisions exist; his characterization of it as the “largest tax cuts in history” is a claim disputed by most nonpartisan analyses, which typically rank 1980s-era cuts larger as a share of the economy (⚠️ misleading by most economists’ preferred metric).
Border Security and Crime: The Applause Lines That Don’t Hold Up
This section of the speech contained some of the evening’s most repeated — and most thoroughly fact-checked — claims.
“1,200 miles of wall”: Trump said, twice, that “we built 1,200 miles of wall.” Fact check: ❌ False. As of August 19, 2026, Customs and Border Protection data show roughly 747 miles of primary border wall and 126 miles of secondary wall exist along the entire 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border — combining construction under every administration since George W. Bush. In Trump’s second term specifically, CBP figures show about 64 miles of new primary wall and 39 miles of replacement construction (WISN, 2026). There is no combination of first-term and second-term construction that totals anywhere near 1,200 miles.
“11,888 murderers”: Trump repeated a claim that Biden “led” 11,888 murderers into the country. Fact check: ❌ False, and repeatedly debunked. This figure originates from a 2024 ICE letter to Congress describing the agency’s “non-detained docket” — a list of more than 13,000 noncitizens at any point in decades convicted of homicide, in the U.S. or abroad, who are not currently in ICE detention (some are, in fact, incarcerated in state or federal prison). ICE’s own data show similar totals were already on this docket in mid-2021, months into the Biden administration, meaning the “vast majority” predate Biden’s presidency and include people who entered during Trump’s own first term (FactCheck.org, 2025; NBC News, 2026).
“25 million people” entered during Biden’s term: Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading. Independent estimates from the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute put net new unauthorized immigration during the Biden years at a few million, and total CBP border encounters over the same period — a figure that includes people quickly expelled and repeat crossers counted multiple times — came to fewer than 11 million, not 25 million.
“Zero illegal aliens admitted… in the past 15 months”: Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading. DHS’s own framing of this achievement refers to “zero releases” of detained migrants into U.S. communities, not the complete absence of unauthorized crossings, which — while down sharply from 2023–24 levels — have not been literally zero.
Fentanyl seizures “down 64%,” “97% by water”: Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading. Trump has cited shifting percentages for this claim over time — 56%, 59%, and 64% in different speeches — and experts caution that seizure totals are an imperfect proxy for how much fentanyl is actually crossing the border, since fewer pounds seized could reflect either less smuggling or simply less detection (FactCheck.org, 2026). CBP data do show a roughly 45–50% year-over-year drop in fentanyl seizures, and CDC figures the White House has cited separately show a genuine 22% decline in synthetic-opioid deaths from 2024 to 2025 — a real and significant public-health improvement, even if the specific percentages Trump used for border interdiction are inconsistent.
“Crime down 78%” in Washington, D.C.: Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading. Violent crime and specific offenses like carjacking have genuinely fallen sharply in D.C. — the Council on Criminal Justice found homicide down about 41–43% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, among other declines (Council on Criminal Justice, 2026) — but no independent dataset reviewed for this piece supports a 78% figure, and a Niskanen Center study found the National Guard deployment specifically reduced property crime in tourist areas with little measurable effect on violent crime (Military.com, 2026).
“Lowest murder rate in 125 years”: Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading, though directionally accurate. The 2025 U.S. homicide rate is genuinely on pace to be among the lowest recorded since at least 1900, per the Council on Criminal Justice, and represents the largest single-year percentage drop on record. But crime-data researchers caution that record-keeping before 1960 isn’t methodologically comparable to modern statistics, so experts say a more defensible claim is that it’s roughly a 65-year low, not a certain 125-year record (PolitiFact, 2026).
The Virginia murder case: Trump described, without naming her, the killing of 42-year-old Carmen Lizet Puch in Great Falls, Virginia, by a man he said entered the country illegally and was “released into the United States again and again.” Fact check: ✅ Largely accurate on the core facts. Fairfax County Police arrested 19-year-old Alexis Antonio Cedillos-Campos, an El Salvadoran national, and charged him with second-degree murder after DHS said he crossed the border illegally near El Paso in April 2024 and was released by the Biden administration (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2026). Trump’s phrase “again and again,” however, overstates the record — reporting reviewed for this article documents one confirmed release, not repeated ones.
“2% of the population creates 91% of the crime”: ℹ️ Unverifiable. This statistic could not be traced to a specific, citable government dataset for this article.
“The Snake”: Trump’s Border Parable
Roughly 90 minutes into the rally, Trump departed from policy to recite “The Snake,” a spoken-word piece adapted from a 1968 Oscar Brown Jr. song that Trump has used as a border-security parable since his first presidential campaign. He introduced it by referencing the Virginia murder case, then delivered the story of a woman who takes in a “half-frozen snake” that ultimately bites and kills her. Given copyright protections on the underlying lyrics, this article does not reproduce the recitation; the piece’s function in the speech was to cast immigrants who commit violent crimes as inherently and permanently dangerous — “they were born killers,” Trump said afterward — a framing criminologists and immigration researchers dispute, since it applies the behavior of individual offenders to an entire population.
The Midterm Targets: Michigan, Florida, and Texas
Trump spent significant time attacking Democratic Senate nominees in three battleground states, previewing likely lines of attack for the fall campaign.
Michigan — Abdul El-Sayed: Trump claimed El-Sayed “admitted openly that he wants to pack the Supreme Court with 23 far left justices,” that his sister “celebrated the terrorist slaughter of babies on October 7th,” and that his mother “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars” to Osama bin Laden. Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading on the Court claim; the family allegations are reported but not confirmed by neutral sourcing. El-Sayed’s actual, publicly stated position calls for ending lifetime Supreme Court appointments, giving each president three appointments, and expanding the Court’s size — proposals that, if applied repeatedly, could in theory grow the bench, but “23 far left justices” is not a figure that appears in his platform (Ballotpedia, 2026; Bloomberg Law, 2026). Reports that El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, worked in the late 1990s and early 2000s for the Islamic American Relief Agency — an organization the U.S. Treasury Department designated in 2004 over alleged financial ties to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden — and that his half-sister posted an Oct. 7 anniversary video have circulated widely, primarily through conservative outlets, and Elkomy was never charged with a crime (WSET/TND, 2026).
Florida — Angie Nixon: Trump said Florida Democrats “nominated an official member of the Marxist Democrat Socialists of America Party for the U.S. Senate,” and described the DSA platform as including “eliminating the United States Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court,” “defunding and abolishing the police,” “amnesty for all illegals, including murderers,” “ending our military,” and “abolishing all prisons.” Fact check: ✅ Accurate that Nixon is a DSA member; accurate on the DSA’s national platform; the “murderers” and “reparations” specifics are the president’s own gloss. State Rep. Angie Nixon defeated Alex Vindman in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary after recently joining the DSA, though she is not endorsed by the national organization and publicly rejects the “socialist” label, describing herself as “a capitalist” (Fox News, 2026; Axios, 2026). DSA national co-chair Megan Romer separately confirmed on Fox News that the group’s platform does call for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress, eliminating ICE, granting amnesty to people in the country illegally, defunding the Pentagon, and phasing out prisons and policing as long-term goals (Washington Times, 2026; Fox News, 2026).
Texas — James Talarico: Trump said the Texas Democratic nominee “said he hates Christianity and that the Ten Commandments are a form of fascism.” Fact check: ❌ False. State Rep. James Talarico is a practicing Christian who has studied for a master of divinity degree at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and has said he hopes to become a pastor. He has criticized a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments as “unconstitutional… un-American… [and] deeply un-Christian,” and has used the term “Christo-fascism” to describe what he sees as the political weaponization of religion by some on the right — but he has not called the Ten Commandments themselves “a form of fascism,” nor said he hates Christianity (Religion News Service, 2026; Britannica, 2026). His Republican opponent’s campaign has made similar characterizations of his views, which Talarico disputes as taken out of context.
The DNC and “Abolish ICE”
Trump claimed “the entire Democrat National Committee voted to abolish ICE, meaning the official Democrat Party platform now is” to end immigration enforcement. Fact check: ⚠️ Misleading. At its August 15–16, 2026 summer meeting in Austin, Texas, the DNC’s Resolutions Committee did approve, by a 25–27 to 12 vote (accounts vary slightly), a resolution urging congressional Democrats to draft legislation abolishing ICE, and the full committee later approved a bundled package of resolutions — including that one — by unanimous voice vote (Newsweek, 2026; Washington Times, 2026). However, a separate, competing resolution calling only for “concrete reforms” to ICE also passed at the same meeting, the vote is explicitly non-binding, and it does not change the Democratic Party’s official platform, which will not be set until the 2028 convention (Washington Times, 2026).
Guns, Healthcare, and the Legislative Wish List
Trump reiterated support for the Second Amendment, framing Darline Graham as a bulwark against Democratic gun restrictions, and outlined a legislative wish list for a second-term Republican Congress: harsher penalties for repeat violent offenders, an end to “no cash bail” policies, an expanded Most Favored Nation drug-pricing push, a plan to redirect insurance-company payments “directly to the people,” and passage of a “Save America Act” that would require photo voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote nationwide. Context box: The Save America Act, as described, is a legislative proposal, not existing law; voter ID and citizenship-verification requirements for federal elections remain contested in Congress and the courts (ℹ️ policy proposal, not yet enacted).
Honoring Lindsey Graham: The Joint Base Renaming
Trump highlighted the Pentagon’s decision to rename Joint Base Charleston as Joint Base Lindsey Graham, along with “nearly $360 million” in this year’s defense spending tied to the base. Fact check: ✅ Accurate on the renaming. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth officially unveiled the new name at a ceremony on August 10, 2026, attended by Darline Graham, Gov. McMaster, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, honoring Graham’s 33 years of Air Force service and decades of advocacy for the base (DVIDS, 2026). The specific “$360 million” defense-spending figure for the current fiscal year could not be independently verified for this article (ℹ️ unverifiable).
The Supporting Cast: Scott, Barrasso, Fry, and Leavitt Take the Mic
Several Republican officials briefly addressed the crowd before Trump resumed speaking.
Sen. Tim Scott led an “Is this Donald Trump country?” call-and-response, crediting Trump with closing the border, cutting taxes, and “keeping Americans safe.”
Sen. John Barrasso compared South Carolina and his home state of Wyoming as devotees of a shared “cowboy code,” praising both states’ loyalty to Trump.
Rep. Russell Fry, noting the date fell on a Friday (“Fry-day,” in his framing), urged the crowd to turn out in November and warned against Democrats “unsealing” the border.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, delivered an emotional tribute to Trump before announcing she would step back temporarily to spend time with her newborn children, prompting Trump to note, half-joking, that “she loves the baby more than she loves Donald Trump.”
Darline Graham herself thanked Trump for his endorsement and for delivering a eulogy at her brother’s funeral, framing her Senate bid as a continuation of his legacy and describing Myrtle Beach as “MAGA country.”
Closing: “I Am on the Ballot”
Trump closed with a now-familiar refrain — asking supporters to treat the midterms as though he personally were on the ballot, even though he is constitutionally barred from a third term — before running through a litany of “we will make America ___ again” promises and thanking the crowd. He reiterated that early voting for the runoff continues through Friday and that polls will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 25.
A Note on Method
This fact-check prioritized claims that were specific, checkable, and consequential to public understanding — particularly those involving named individuals, official government actions, and statistics repeated across multiple Trump speeches. Some rhetorical claims (crowd sizes, subjective characterizations of opponents, predictions about future events) fall outside what fact-checking can meaningfully evaluate and were treated as opinion rather than assigned a verdict. Given the volume and pace of claims in a 90-minute rally speech, this piece does not claim to have checked every individual assertion, but it addresses the claims most likely to shape public understanding of the event.
Source of the Transcript
Trump, Donald. “Speech: Donald Trump Addresses a Political Rally in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – August 21, 2026.” Factbase Transcripts, powered by FiscalNote StressLens, CQ and Roll Call / FiscalNote, 21 Aug. 2026.
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