Trump stops in Greensboro, his 4th NC visit in two days, as election enters home stretch
Two weeks out from Election Day, former President Donald Trump returned to North Carolina for his fourth event in the state in two days.
Addressing an energized crowd in Greensboro on Tuesday night, Trump urged supporters to take advantage of early voting and tell Vice President Kamala Harris that she’s “fired.” Trump said Harris had been the “worst vice president” in history. Pointing to her dropping out of the 2020 presidential race before the Democratic primaries began, he said she “has no right to even run.” He said the country would be “finished” if she won.
In an almost two-hour speech, Trump slammed the Biden-Harris administration’s economic and energy policies, and response to the wars between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Hamas, assailing “stupid people running our country” that he said aren’t respected by foreign leaders.
Before wrapping up his remarks, he brought out former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a major supporter of his, who announced to the cheering crowd that after becoming an independent in 2022, she had decided to join the Republican Party.
Trump spent nearly all of Monday in North Carolina, heading west to Swannanoa to see the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene before flying to the other side of the state for a rally in Greenville at the same venue where Harris held her own rally a week earlier. He ended the day by heading back west for an invitation-only meeting with faith leaders in Concord.
As the presidential race enters the final stretch, the Trump and Harris campaigns are planning how best to deploy the candidates, their running mates, and their top surrogates to the swing states that will decide the election.
On Tuesday, Trump attended a roundtable discussion in Miami aimed at reaching Latino voters in the morning, before returning to the Tar Heel State for the rally at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex’s Special Events Center, an arena with a capacity of 5,000.
Trump’s visits over 24 hours illustrate the significance of North Carolina as a battleground state with 16 electoral votes. Polling shows an exceedingly close race between Harris and Trump.
Taxes & tariffs
Trump touted his plans to implement tariffs and cut taxes, including his call to eliminate taxes on tips, and a policy he recently announced in Detroit to make interest on car loans tax-deductible.
He said in his second term he would ramp up domestic energy production and crack down on illegal immigration. While on the campaign trail this year, Trump has frequently pledged to launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” — a promise he reiterated on Tuesday.
Trump also called, to cheers and applause from the crowd, for migrants here illegally who kill American citizens or law enforcement to receive the death penalty. He made the same remark at rallies in Nevada and Colorado earlier this month.
Reflecting on his third bid for the White House drawing to a close, Trump said to cheers that his campaign to “Make America Great Again” was a “movement of love” and the “single greatest political movement in the history of our country.”
Ahead of Trump’s remarks on Tuesday, N.C. GOP Chairman Jason Simmons told The News & Observer that early voter turnout from Republicans across the state “has been fantastic” so far.
The State Board of Elections reported that as of 4 p.m. Sunday — the fourth day of early voting — more than a million of North Carolina’s nearly 7.8 million registered voters had cast their ballots.
Simmons said early voting figures from those counties that report breakdowns of how many people voting early are registered Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters, shows that Republicans “continue to overperform” this year.
The increase in GOP voters going to the polls early, instead of on Election Day, comes as Trump and his campaign have stressed the importance of voting however and whenever is easiest for them.
Simmons said that Republican and unaffiliated voters “have been frustrated with what they’ve seen over the last four years with this administration, with higher prices and public safety that’s just out of control.”
Other speakers at Tuesday’s rally included U.S. Sen. Ted Budd, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, and Addison McDowell, who is running for Congress from North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District.
Campaign visits from candidates
Last week, after Harris visited Raleigh to pack supplies for Western North Carolina and rallied supporters in Greenville, her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz visited Durham and Winston-Salem.
In Durham, Walz was joined by former President Bill Clinton, who continued on with a bus tour of Eastern North Carolina that included stops in Wilmington, Fayetteville, Wilson, Greenville and Rocky Mount, and ended with a block party in Raleigh.
Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, campaigned and took questions from reporters in Wilmington last week as well.
During his swing across North Carolina on Monday, Trump urged supporters to get to the polling booths to “save America.”
Ahead of Trump’s Greensboro rally, Democrats held a news conference where they slammed the Republican nominee as unfit for office, and “too extreme for North Carolina.”
State Sen. Michael Garrett, a Greensboro Democrat, said a second Trump presidency “would mean the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.”
“Trump is also determined to cut Social Security and return America to a very dark past — back to failed economic policies that leave our seniors high and dry,” Garrett said. “Our community deserves better than a second Trump presidency, and we’re ready to elect Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz.”
Mark Robinson not in attendance
Tuesday’s speakers didn’t include Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor, who Trump has endorsed. During a March rally in Greensboro, where Robinson is from, Trump called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
Robinson, who has trailed Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein in the polls for months, hasn’t appeared with Trump since a mid-August rally in Asheboro, when Trump welcomed Robinson on stage.
In the weeks since the governor’s race was upended by a CNN report that revealed alleged racist, sexually graphic, and antisemitic comments Robinson made on the message board of a pornography website a decade ago, Trump has distanced himself from Robinson.
As he was heading to North Carolina on Monday, Trump declined to answer when asked by a reporter if he would urge supporters to continue backing Robinson.
“I’m not familiar with the state of the race right now,” Trump said, according to Politico. “I haven’t seen it.”
This story was originally published October 22, 2024 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Trump stops in Greensboro, his 4th NC visit in two days, as election enters home stretch."
