Biden visits key city in swing state as Trump rails against him at courthouse
President Joe Biden and Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail this week, but while taking very different detours — one to handle sensitive presidential tasks and the other to appear before a criminal jury.
Biden was in North Carolina on Thursday to address supporters in the coastal town of Wilmington, which has the same name as the Delaware city where he has permanent residence. But he was courting North Carolinians, not his fellow Delawarians, as he and his campaign aides continued insisting he could win the Tar Heel State in November.
His expected general election foe, Trump, was back in court Thursday after a Wednesday spent campaigning. Trump addressed reporters Thursday by calling the criminal hush money trial a “ridiculous show trial” and a “Biden trial.”
Both pitched their economic visions to voters — and, in Trump’s case, to courthouse reporters. Biden weaved parts of his stump speech into an official event about clean drinking water.
“Until the United States of America deals with this, how can we say we’re the leading nation in the world? For God’s sake, we’re better than this. … There is no safe level of lead” in drinking water, he said, announcing federal funding to address lead pipe removal and other clean water projects in North Carolina. “Folks, this is about safety, but it’s also about basic fairness. … Studies show communities of color have been hardest hit.”
He held the Wilmington event after handling presidential duties, first delivering remarks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House about campus protests over the Israel-hamas war in Gaza that have sometimes turned violent. From there, he jetted to Charlotte, North Carolina, to honor several law enforcement officers who were shot dead there earlier this week.
Biden used his morning remarks to condemn threats or hate speech against Jewish and Arab American students, including Palestinian American students. “There should be no place on any campus, no place in America, for antisemitism, threats of violence against Jewish students,” he said.
“There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, antisemitism, Islamophobia, discrimination against Arab
Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong,” he said. “There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-american. … There’s a right to protest,” he added, “but not the right to create chaos.”
Much of Biden’s emerging campaign stump speech is about how his policies and legislative accomplishments have made voters’ lives better. That also was the case in the coastal city on Thursday.
Biden touted the bipartisan infrastructure law that passed both chambers of Congress during his term, saying it has so far delivered “$9 billion to North Carolina alone” and created what he dubbed “good jobs.” He warned that congressional Republicans’ opposition could cause “1 in 5” North Carolina families to lose internet access unless many of them agree to reload a federal broadband access program. And he contended that large companies like Walmart are unfairly keeping inflationary prices of consumer goods higher than necessary.
“Wages are rising. … Manufacturing is booming,” Biden said to applause. He reiterated his promise to make the “very wealthy and big corporations begin to pay their fair share” in taxes.