President Trump held a whirlwind day of campaigning on Saturday, kicking off the final ten-day stretch until the November elections with rallies in three key swing states.
The president started the weekend by casting his ballot early and in-person Saturday morning in West Palm Beach, Florida, telling reporters afterward: “I voted for a guy named Trump.”
Unsurprisingly, Trump says he voted “straight Republican” when he voted early in Florida on Saturday.
Trump had been asked whether he voted for House nominee Laura Loomer, a far-right Republican candidate who has been banned from social media sites because of her racist and anti-Muslim speech.
She is facing incumbent congresswoman Lois Frankel, who has been a political fixture for decades in the Palm Beach County district, where the only Republican to ever run against her, in 2016, lost by 27 percentage points.
West Palm Beach is near his private Mar-a-Lago club. He used to vote in New York but changed his residency to Florida last year.
Soon after, the president headed out for his busy day of campaigning, with rallies scheduled in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. Here were some of the president’s key talking points in each state:
North Carolina
Trump continued to criticize Joe Biden’s stance on COVID during his first official campaign stop of the day at Robeson County Fairgrounds in Lumberton, North Carolina. Trump slammed his opponent for saying during their debate that the country is headed for a dark winter because of the pandemic — something health experts have been warning for months.
“We’re rounding the turn … our numbers are incredible,” Trump told supporters even as the country’s daily coronavirus tally reached record heights with more than 83,000 infections reported on Friday.
The U.S. death toll has grown to 223,995, according to the COVID-19 dashboard published by Johns Hopkins University. The total U.S. caseload reported on the site Friday was 83,757, topping the 77,362 cases reported on July 16.
Trump also mocked a rally being held by Biden in Pennsylvania because most of his supporters listened while sitting in their cars. The president jokingly said the cars were “too close together, I think.”
Trump said that he watched Biden’s rally as he flew to North Carolina and said it appeared attendees, who were in their cars, weren’t properly socially distancing.
“They weren’t socially distanced,” Trump said.
“You know why we have cases?” Trump added. “’Cause we test so much. And in many ways, it’s good. And in many ways, it’s foolish. In many ways, OK? In many ways it’s very foolish.”
Ohio
At the Pickaway County Fairgrounds Saturday, President Trump denounced the latest coverage of COVID-19, saying, “They’re trying to scare everybody.”
“You know all they talk about cases. Always cases, cases, cases,” Trump said to a crowd of around 10,000 people. His comments come as Ohio marked a fifth day of recording-breaking daily COVID-19 cases Friday, documenting an increase of more than 2,500.
While the crowd cheered — many without masks and not abiding by recommended social distancing guidelines — Trump told the audience they needed to remain vigilant by wearing a mask when it’s needed.
Trump made sure Ohioans remember that he pushed the Big Ten to play football after the season had initially been canceled amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
The president told supporters, “I know that life in Ohio is not complete without the glory of Ohio State football.”
Trump held a big rally about 30 miles from the Ohio State University campus, not long after the Buckeyes won their delayed season opener over Nebraska Saturday afternoon.
The Big Ten had initially scuttled fall sports but did an about face last month on football amid pressure from Trump as well as athletes, coaches, fans and college towns that rely on football Saturdays to fill restaurants and hotels and provide much-needed tax revenue.
The crowd watched the Nebraska-OSU game on large screens set up by the Trump campaign before the president’s arrival. Trump joked later that he worried they would have been in a foul mood had the Buckeyes lost.
The Big Ten includes schools clustered in some of the battleground states critical to his reelection effort, including Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Read more about the president’s visit to Ohio.
Wisconsin
“The election is a choice between a Trump super recovery and a Biden depression,” Trump told told his biggest crowd of the day at a night-time rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Trump also criticized Biden for saying that the country was headed for a “dark winter” because of the pandemic — the scenario of a surge in infections that health experts have warned about for months.
“I thought Sleepy Joe was very dark. How dark was that? How horrible was that?” he asked.
A record of more than 83,000 infections were reported on Friday alone.
Trump will return to the state before Election Day, with a rally scheduled for Tuesday in Salem, Wisconsin.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
