Trump calls for reopening NC during Winston-Salem rally

President Donald Trump made his third visit to North Carolina in as many weeks on Tuesday, rallying thousands of supporters at the Winston-Salem airport.

"If we win, America wins," Trump told the cheering throng during a 75-minute speech touting his successes and warning of a grim future if Democrat Joe Biden wins the November election. "If they win, the mobs win."

In addition to Biden, Trump took aim at Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, saying he is needlessly punishing small businesses by not reopening them amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump called the move political and predicted everything would reopen quickly after the election.

"If this guy doesn't open your state, you have no choice," he said, urging people to elect Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest as governor.

"I've been to many states. They're not in shutdowns, and they're doing better," Trump said, telling Forest to take action and tell Cooper "you don't know what you're doing."

Cooper last week moved North Carolina into "Phase 2.5" of a three-stage plan to reopen businesses and resume social activities during the pandemic. Gyms and museums were allowed to reopen at limited capacity, but bars, movie theaters and other entertainment venues remain closed.

Few masks, little distancing at rally

The state also has a mask mandate when people are in public, a requirement that many in the rally crowd – and Trump himself – defied.

David Plyler, the Republican chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, called on Trump to set an example by wearing a mask at the rally.

"You know what would be neat? If before he got off the plane, if he gave everybody a box of Make America Great Again masks," Plyler told CNN, noting that he couldn't attend the rally because he had a surgery scheduled for Tuesday.

"My concern is, we've got the virus here. The virus doesn't give a rip whether it's the president or God almighty himself. It's going to find its place, and the way we have to figure this, at least in my mind, is that we all have to be careful about it," he said. "They're talking about several thousand people showing up to a place that wasn't designed to have several thousand people show up. So, you get that many people in one place, and I don't think several thousand people are going to give themselves 6 feet apart, not at that airport, and you've got problems."

There was very little social distancing among the crowd, which was packed into bleachers erected near an airport runway. Some even held signs calling the rally a "peaceful protest," as Trump noted that protesters seem to be given more rights during the pandemic than others.

"I think his supporters see the coronavirus pandemic very differently than Democrats. They see it as a very small risk," said David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College in Raleigh. "The Democratic base – the Biden supporters – they are believers in social distancing and masks. They would feel uncomfortable in an event like what the president does, and the president's supporters are very comfortable without social distancing, without masks."

Although the state limits mass gathering to 50 people outside, political rallies are exempted as a First Amendment activity.

Still, Democratic 4th District Congressman David Price called Trump's rally "reckless" by having so many people together at once.

"He’s using these reckless rallies to try to play down the pandemic and try to act like it didn’t exist and certainly play down his failure to deal with the pandemic, which is catastrophic, catastrophic for our country's health and catastrophic for the economy," Price said.

But those in the crowd couldn't care less, as long as they got to see Trump.

"We think the pandemic is getting to be more like a spandemic. It’s just getting out of hand, so we just decided let’s travel and go," said Karen Oliver, who along with their husband extended a vacation in North Carolina just so they could attend the rally.

"The president needs some support right now. I feel like everyone’s kind of bashing him," said Catherine Whitley, an Appalachian State University student. "I’m not concerned about COVID at all, especially for my age, at least. We will wear masks if we are required to wear them. If not, awesome."

Trump cites success, slams Biden, Harris

Trump equated Biden with riots, trade deficits, out-of-control spending, higher taxes, unchecked immigration and regulations that would choke off any economic growth.

"Biden has now formed an unholy alliance with the most extreme and dangerous elements of the radical left," he said. "The globalists and the leftists make nature partners because they're united by their contempt for the American middle class."

He also ridiculed Biden's running mate, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, mocking her first name and saying "it would be an insult to the country" if she were to become the first female president.

By comparison, Trump said, he has helped rebuild the U.S. economy, the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs, continues to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and is fighting to lower health care and prescription drug costs.

"I've done more than I promised [in 2016]," he said.

As the campaign enters its heated final months, Trump is betting an imminent coronavirus vaccine and a rebounding economy will provide an eleventh-hour boost to his re-election effort.

He has begun accelerating his public timeline on a potential vaccine, saying Monday one might be available "very soon, maybe even before a very special date" – a reference to Election Day. A new campaign ad out Tuesday crystallized the impression he hopes to call an end to the pandemic before voters decide his fate.

"In the race for a vaccine, the finish line is approaching," a narrator says in the opening lines of the commercial, concluding: "President Trump's great American comeback is now underway."

Trump told the Winston-Salem crowd that Biden is questioning the vaccine's safety solely to make him look bad.

"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are undermining science and risking countless lives with their reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric," he said. "They're trying to disparage it. They're trying to make it politics."

The rally marked Trump's third visit to North Carolina in 15 days, following his stop in Charlotte to speak at the Republican National Convention and to a farm near Asheville to tout a program supporting farmers during the pandemic, both on Aug. 24, and a visit to Wilmington last Wednesday to honor that city's role in World War II.

He won the state narrowly in 2016, and polls currently show a tight race against Biden. North Carolina began mailing absentee ballots last week, the first in the nation where voters can begin making their selections.