WASHINGTON _ Facing a large deficit in the polls with less than three weeks until Election Day, President Donald Trump returned to North Carolina on Thursday and assured supporters that he would win the state and capture reelection.
It was the first day of in-person early voting in the state, which is critical to Trump's reelection chances and where Democratic challenger Joe Biden holds a small but consistent 3- to 4-point lead in recent polls.
"This is the most important election of our lives, maybe in the history of our country. So get your friends, get your family, get your neighbors, get out and vote," Trump said. "The red wave is coming. The red wave is coming."
Trump spoke outdoors, in front of Air Force One, for 79 minutes before an estimated crowd of about 2,000 at the Pitt-Greenville Airport. It was Trump's fifth visit to North Carolina in six weeks but his first since being hospitalized after testing positive for the coronavirus. He was not seen wearing a mask at all.
Trump, who was trailing in the polls before winning an Electoral College victory in 2016, dismissed any notion that he was trailing _ despite a spate of recent polls that show him down significantly across the country.
"This is a carbon copy of what happened last time," he said, referring to the run-up to his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
North Carolina's 15 electoral votes are seen as critical to any path to victory for Trump, while they would open up many lanes to an electoral win for Biden, who leads in national polls and is seen as the favorite.
More than 170,000 North Carolinians had voted by late afternoon Thursday, according to the State Board of Elections. More than 500,000 people have voted in the state through mail-in ballots, and those continue to pour in.
"I'm running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics. ... How do you lose to a guy like this?" Trump said. "By the way, we're leading in North Carolina. We're leading everywhere where people are intelligent."
It was a typical Trump campaign speech, with the president veering from topic to topic, often going away from prepared remarks. He offered quick hits on dozens of subjects and offered an extended retelling of election night in 2016 as the results came in and his chances for victory soared.
Biden said in a statement issued before the visit that Trump "has proven himself incapable of keeping North Carolinians safe or putting the needs of working families over the interests of the wealthy and big corporations."
"The people of North Carolina deserve better than President Trump's disastrous leadership and empty promises," Biden said in the statement. "As President, I will do my job and look out for your family as if it was my own. I will unite our nation to defeat this virus, protect your health care, and build back better."
Nearly 239,000 North Carolinians have tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 3,870 people have died, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump, as he has in previous stops, called on Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to open up the state and open up the schools. He said children "have the strongest immune systems," citing his son Barron's recovery from the coronavirus.
"We've learned about this disease. You've got to open up your businesses, open up your schools. Get it going," Trump said. "We have incredible therapeutics, we have incredible drugs. We have, in my opinion, a cure."
Trump was referring to the drugs that he took while hospitalized.
Among the reasons that Trump is trailing in the polls is his standing with suburban women. Biden leads Trump 55-34 with college-educated white women, according to a new poll from Yahoo News. Trump lost that group by 7 points in 2016, according to exit polls. A Morning Consult poll found Biden leading 54-40 among all women, who make up a majority of the electorate.
Trump said Thursday that "suburban women should love Trump," in part because of his July repeal of an Obama-era regulation that was meant to reduce racial discrimination in housing.
"I keep hearing about the suburban women," he told the crowd. "I let you have the American Dream. I wiped out a regulation that will destroy the suburbs, you know that. ... They don't want to have a (housing) project built next to that beautiful house, right? So why is it that the fake news keeps saying that women aren't gonna like Trump?
"You know what women want more than anything? They want safety, security and they want to be able to have their houses and leave me alone."
Clinton was the first woman to win the nomination of one of the two major political parties. Trump said there would be a woman to break the glass ceiling one day.
"It just won't be Hillary," he said. "And you know who else it won't be, it won't be Kamala."
Trump mispronounced the name of Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Harris, a U.S. senator from California, was scheduled to visit Asheville and Charlotte on Thursday, but canceled her travel after her communications director tested positive for COVID-19.
Harris tested negative Wednesday and Thursday but has suspended travel through Sunday. Trump offered her his best wishes during the speech.
"It's dust. It's a little tricky thing. Masks, no masks, everything. You can do all you want, but you know you still need help from the boss," Trump said, referencing God.
Trump also spent time discussing the Supreme Court, where his nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, is expected to be confirmed by the Republican-held Senate later this month. If confirmed, she will be Trump's third appointee to the nine-member court and could significantly shift it to the right ideologically.
"I don't know what can stop it because she's so good, it's a freight train," Trump said, while calling on Biden to release a list of judges he would consider for the court.
Trump and Biden were scheduled to debate for the second time Thursday night. But when the commission that controls the debates said it would be a virtual event after Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, Trump backed out.
Now each candidate has a televised town hall scheduled for Thursday night. Trump's event will be on NBC, which aired Trump's reality TV show "The Apprentice" for years before he entered politics.
"It's NBC, the worst," Trump said. " ... Watch the difference in tone between what they did to this guy (Biden) that can't put two sentences together and what they do to me."
The comment highlighted two of the main points of the speech _ grievance against entities like big tech and the news media and pointed attacks on Biden. Trump went after Biden from the top of the speech, calling him corrupt and recounting recent reporting by the New York Post about his son Hunter Biden.
He accused Joe Biden of "betraying the workers of North Carolina through one act of economic treachery after another." He routinely called Biden "corrupt."
Trump did events in Florida and Iowa earlier this week in his return to the trail and plans to go to Georgia and Wisconsin later this week. Trump won all four states in 2016, as he did North Carolina, but is in tough races in all five.
Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to hold an event in Selma on Friday.
