One woman laughed and said to the man with her: “You have to get one!” A group of four middle-aged women pulled out their wallets and tried to bargain the vendors down from $20. One of the vendors shouted again and again: “Trump that b—-! Trump that b—-!” A guy walking past responded: “That’s right!”

“I’m a pretty blunt person, so it’s kind of how I feel about things,” said Amanda Feather, a 35-year-old mother of six who is a property manager in Asheboro, N.C., and bought one of the T-shirts before attending the rally with her husband and two young daughters. “I think coming from Trump it would probably be inappropriate. From a voter’s point of view, I think we have the right. . . . If that’s how we feel, we should have the right to say it. And I would tell it to her face if she walked up. That’s how I feel about her.”…

The word is often shouted from the audience as Trump attacks her, murmured in pre-rally conversations and typed on Twitter. It appears on a popular button sold by vendors at many rallies: “Life’s a b—-, don’t vote for one.” And, most prominently, it is on those white T-shirts, created by the Ohio-based Street Talk Tees and sold at nearly all of Trump’s rallies.

In an interview last month, Trump said he was unaware that his fans were using the word.

“They’re what? They’re calling her what?” Trump said, as the word was repeated to him a second time. “I have not heard that. I don’t like that. But I have not heard that. I would not be happy if I heard it.”