“If you’re pro-God and pro-America and pro-gun and pro-duck hunting, that’s all I want,” Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the family, told the crowd.
But no character was more bombastic than the president himself, who infused new complaints about impeachment with years-old gripes. He paused for several seconds as the crowd launched into chants of “lock her up” — a 2016 campaign-era cheer about Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent at the time, Hillary Clinton, nearly 1,100 days after the election.
The president’s appearance on Wednesday in Monroe is not the only development that has provoked high emotions in recent days. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Rispone angered the governor’s supporters by saying that Mr. Edwards had “hurt the reputation” of his alma mater, the United States Military Academy, with his work as a trial lawyer.
It was Mr. Rispone’s turn to be outraged when a Democratic New Orleans City Council member appeared in a radio ad comparing Mr. Rispone to the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
“It is disgusting how low they will go,” Mr. Rispone said at the rally, which drew chants of “Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!” from supporters. Mr. Rispone praised the president for “exposing John Bel Edwards as the liberal that he is.”
Still, Mr. Rispone has proved to be considerably less polished than Mr. Edwards, a lawyer who served eight years in the State House before becoming governor. Mr. Rispone has appeared in just one debate, on Oct. 30, since the primary and has tried to use his newcomer status as a selling point, telling voters he is “not a career politician” but a “successful entrepreneur” and “conservative outsider.”
Supporters in the crowd did not seem impressed with Mr. Rispone’s Trumpian performance so far.
“That last debate may have hurt him,” James Gardner, a 52-year-old from Winnfield, La., said as he stood near the rally stage waiting for the president to speak. “Edwards just made him look stupid.”