Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts during a campaign rally, at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame in Asheboro, North Carolina.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

In his first outdoor rally since last month’s assassination attempt, Donald Trump appeared on stage in North Carolina to talk about national security as part of his weeklong trip across the country to draw attention away from Democrats and their national convention.

“Seventy-six days from now, we’re going to win this state and we’re going to win the White House,” Trump said at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame from behind a podium surrounded by panes of bulletproof glass that formed a protective wall across the stage.

Storage containers were stacked around the perimeter to create additional walls and block sight lines. Snipers were positioned on roofs at the venue, where old aircraft were sitting behind the podium and a large American flag was suspended from cranes.

The event, billed as being focused on national security issues, is part of Trump’s weeklong series of counterprogramming to the Democratic National Convention, which is underway in Chicago. Allies have been urging him to focus on policy instead of personal attacks as he struggles to adjust to running against Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

On Tuesday night, the convention showcased a double dose of Obama firepower, as the former president and former first lady assailed Trump, calling him out repeatedly by name.

“His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black,” Michelle Obama said of Trump in a rousing speech.

She also referenced a comment he made in a June debate, asking: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

Barack Obama mocked Trump’s obsession with his crowd sizes and called Trump “a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.”

“It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,” the former president said.

Trump was joined Wednesday by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who cast Harris as a candidate selected by power brokers instead of voters and lambasted her vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, before Trump took the stage.

That included continuing to hammer Walz for, at times, mischaracterizing his service record as an Army National Guard member, as well as Walz’s retirement from service before his unit’s deployment to Iraq.

“What won’t Stolen Valor Tim Walz lie about?” Vance, who served four years as a Marine, asked the crowd.

Trump has spent the week visiting battleground states in his busiest week of campaigning since the Republican primaries.

Reflecting the importance of North Carolina in this year’s election, the trip is Trump’s second to the state in just the past week. Last Wednesday, he appeared in Asheville, North Carolina, for a speech on the economy.

Trump won North Carolina by a comfortable margin in 2016. The state delivered the former president his closest statewide margin of victory four years ago and is once again considered a key battleground in 2024.

Before Trump arrived, his plane did a flyover of the rally site. The crowd erupted into cheers.

Edna Ryan, a 68-year-old retired flight attendant and private pilot, said she was bullish on the Republican’s chances, but said: “We need to be strong because otherwise we’re going to be very sorry.”

Lisa Watts, a retired business owner from Hickory, North Carolina, who was attending her fifth Trump rally, said she’s feeling “very positive” about the race against Harris.

“A month ago they never spoke her name and now she’s like, quote quote the ‘savior for the country,’” Watts said. “I don’t think that her record proves that she is ready to run this country.”

Watts said she doesn’t think Trump’s chances of winning are much different now from when Biden was the Democratic nominee.

“I think the Democrats are going to try to do everything they can to keep her up on that pedestal,” she said, predicting the hype around Harris will fade.

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announces that is withdrawing from the presidential campaign during the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 28, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence ended his cash-strapped presidential campaign on October 28, after struggling for months to convince Republican voters he was the best alternative to the man he once served with unswerving loyalty — Donald Trump.

“To the American people I say: This is not my time,” Mr. Pence told attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition donor conference in Las Vegas.

Mr. Pence, 64, publicly broke with Mr. Trump, lambasting the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Pence gambled that Republican primary voters would reward him for following the U.S. Constitution rather than obeying Mr. Trump, who wanted him to overturn the 2020 election results.

But Mr. Trump’s base of core supporters never forgave Mr. Pence for overseeing the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election. They viewed Mr. Pence’s actions in his ceremonial role as president of the U.S. Senate as a supreme act of disloyalty to Mr. Trump, who has become the runaway frontrunner in the Republican race.

Mr. Trump has built one of the biggest primary opinion poll leads in U.S. electoral history. Polls show a majority of Republican voters have embraced, or do not care about, Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him and his subsequent efforts to overturn the result.

Mr. Pence stopped short of endorsing anyone in his speech on October 28, but in an apparent swipe at Mr. Trump, called on Americans to select someone who appeals to “the better angels of our nature” and can lead with “civility”.

Mr. Pence failed to attract enough anti-Trump Republican primary voters, and donors, to sustain a candidacy that has languished in the low single digits in opinion polls and struggled to raise money since he announced his White House bid in June.

As a result Mr. Pence, a stolid campaigner short on charisma, was low on cash by October and despite spending time and resources in the first Republican nominating state of Iowa, had failed to catch fire there.

When his campaign released Mr. Pence’s third quarter fundraising totals on October 15, his candidacy was $620,000 in debt and only had $1.2 million cash on hand, far less than several better-performing Republican rivals and insufficient to sustain the financial demands of a White House race.

In several past elections, former vice-presidents who have competed to become the White House nominee have succeeded, including Republican George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

This year, Mr. Pence was up against the political juggernaut that is Mr. Trump, along with other rivals who appealed more to anti-Trump primary voters and donors, including former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Mr. Pence ran as a traditional social and fiscal conservative, and a foreign policy hawk, calling for increased military aid to Ukraine and cuts in welfare entitlement spending. But that brand of Republicanism has been eclipsed in the Trump-era by full-throated populism and “America First” isolationism.