Trump tears into Biden during back-to-back rallies in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin

President Donald Trump wrapped up a series of campaign rallies in swing states on Saturday, blasting his Democratic opponent Joe Biden as a corrupt politician and creature of Washington while painting himself as a political outsider.

Trump repeated the argument from his successful 2016 campaign when voters responded to the unorthodox candidate by handing him the White House.

He did three rallies in three critical background states – North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin – kicking off a final 10 days of campaigning that will feature a jam-packed schedule headed into November 3. 

‘We can’t take any chances. We have to win,’ Trump told his supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in his final rally of the day.

‘Can you imagine losing to this guy?’ he said of Biden, calling for a ‘thundering’ defeat of his Democratic rival at the ballot box while blasting the opposition party as ‘anti-American.’

‘If you want to raise your children safely you must defeat Sleepy Joe Biden,’ he said. 

Trump started his day by casting his ballot in his new home state of Florida, which he needs to win if he wants a second term in the White House. Early voting started there on Monday. 

The president will be in New Hampshire on Sunday. He’ll be in Pennsylvania on Monday. On Tuesday he travels to Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska. 

A senior administration official also said the president will make another West Coast swing, campaigning in Arizona and Nevada, later next week with more stops in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Trump spent the day on the attack – against Biden and his son Hunter, former President Barack Obama, the Washington ‘swamp,’ the media and big tech. 

The supporters at his rally shouted back some of his favorite things to hear: ‘four more years,’ ‘lock him up,’ and ‘we love you.’ 

Trump portrayed himself as a victim of ‘hate-laced’ Obama, who he repeatedly called by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama.

The former president has started campaigning for Biden. He was at a rally for him in Philadelphia on Wednesday and campaigned for him in Miami on Saturday.

Obama has come out hard against his successor in the Oval Office, criticizing his policies and his rhetoric.  

‘Trump wants full credit for the economy he inherited and zero blame for the pandemic he ignored,’ Obama said on Saturday.

Trump, meanwhile, has painted a dark portrait of life under a President Biden, warning people their taxes will go up, their churches will be closed and they will lose their second amendment rights. 

He told them he would fight for them.  

‘If I don’t sound like a typical Washington politician it’s because I’m not a typical politician,’ he told supporters in Circleville, Ohio. ‘I’m fighting for you harder than any politician.’ 

He thanked supporters for firing ‘depraved’ Democrats in the White House four years ago.

‘In 2016, Ohio voted to fire this depraved political establishment and you elected an outsider as your president who is finally putting America first,’ he said.

‘Nobody told me the swamp was going to be that deep and that vicious,’ he said of Washington D.C.

The three states the president was in on Saturday are all tight in the polls.  

Biden holds a slight lead over Trump in Wisconsin, polls show. But Trump became the first Republican in more than 20 years to carry the state in 2016 and he’s fighting hard to win it again, making his second trip in eight days. And he’ll be back again on Tuesday.

Trump has a slight edge over Biden in Ohio where recent polls have shown the president leading. Trump won Ohio by 8 points in 2016.

North Carolina is essentially tied. Trump won the state by 3 points in 2016 and is focused on keeping it in his corner. In addition to his multiple campaign visits, Ivanka Trump campaigned in North Carolina earlier this week.

Trump brush off polls showing him trailing Biden and predicted a ‘red wave like you’ve never seen before’ on Election Day.

‘Well we have ten days, and, you know, nothing worries me,’ he told reporters after he landed in Columbus, Ohio, for his second campaign rally of the day on Saturday. 

‘We’re going to take this right up until the end and then I suspect I’ll rest for about two hours but we’ll see what happens,’ he said. 

He claimed there was a ‘hidden vote’ out there not being seen. He did not elaborate on what he meant.

‘We’re way ahead than where we were four years ago right? Way ahead where we were four years ago,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if it is a hidden vote. I don’t know what it is.’ 

Biden leads Trump by 8 points in the RealClearPolitics voting average on the race but the president and his team are expressing confidence he’ll prevail in the election. 

There are multiple factors that make 2020 unlike any other: the coronavirus pandemic, the uptake in mail-in ballots that could lead to post-election day lawsuits from both sides, and the record number of early votes being cast.

More than 56 million Americans ave already cast their ballot and more than 86 million mail-in ballots have been requested, according to the Election Project.

‘If you look at the early vote it is not nearly what they thought it would be. It’s just not what they thought. A great red wave – going to be a red wave like you’ve never seen before,’ he said.  

The president uses the size of his rallies to judge his support. He based his claim he is winning, in part, on having bigger rallies than Biden. 

‘Is there any place better than a Trump rally,’ he said to thousands of supporters who came out in Ohio. ‘You are so lucky I’m president.’

And, in his speech in North Carolina, he mocked his Democratic rival for holding drive-in rallies instead of traditional ones during the coronavirus pandemic.  

‘People in cars – I don’t get it. I’ve never seen so few cars,’ Trump said. ‘And the cars weren’t in a circle. They were too close together. They weren’t socially distanced.’ 

‘It was a tiny little crowd. You head a couple of horns – honk, honk,’ he added. 

Biden held a drive-in event in Bristol, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, but his campaign kept it small due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

‘I wish I could go car to car to meet you all. I don’t like the idea of all this distance, but it’s necessary,’ Biden told his supporters. ‘What we don’t want to do is become super-spreaders.’ 

Trump has had large rallies but the Biden campaign has deliberately limited attendance at their events, citing restrictions in place because of the coronavirus.  

Whether the love of Trump’s loyalists brings swing voters to the president’s side remains to be seen. Tough economies are usually bad predictors for a president’s re-election efforts but the American economy took a hit from the coronavirus, which means voters may not place the blame for the high unemployment and businesses going under on Trump. 

 He mocked Biden, saying he was the reason Trump ran for president.  

‘I wouldn’t have run, Joe, if you did a good job. I had a very nice life. I wouldn’t have run if you did a good job,’ he said in Ohio, referring to Biden’s time as vice president.  

At his rallies, President Trump repeated his attacks on Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden. He claimed Hunter Biden made millions from contacts in Russia, the Ukraine and China because his father was vice president.

‘The son had no job, no nothing. Unfortunately was forced out of the military, and all of a sudden he’s making millions of dollars,’ Trump said in North Carolina.

‘His father is in charge of three,’ Trump said referring to Russia, China and Ukraine.

The crowd roared in response ‘lock him up.’ 

In Wisconsin, he also repeated his complaints there wasn’t enough coverage of a laptop alleged to belong to Hunter Biden but it’s authenticity has been questioned.

‘There’s never been a more egregious assault on our people, on our country, than what the media is doing. They refuse to write about his corruption.’

‘Lock him up,’ the crowd chanted as Trump chuckled.

The president, in North Carolina, also attacked Biden for saying he wouldn’t end fracking. One of Trump’s campaign arguments against Biden is his claim the Democrat would end the practice that involves injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, boreholes, etc. so as to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas. 

‘He’s either crazy or the worst liar,’ Trump said of Biden’s claims he said he wouldn’t end the practice, which is  used in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.  

With less than two weeks to go both Trump and Biden are on the campaign trail with their running mates and surrogates spread out across the country to rally voters ahead of November 3.  

Trump has sounded confident he will win a second term.

‘Take a look at all how returns coming in. We’re supposed to be behind until the wave, right,’ he told reporters on Air Force One on Friday evening. ‘We’re not way behind. We’re way ahead. We’re way ahead of where we were four years ago. And the wave is going to be much bigger than it was and there’s more enthusiasm now than we ever had four years ago. Four years ago it was amazing.’ 

And he’s already cast his own ballot on Saturday morning in West Palm Beach.

‘I voted for a guy named Trump,’ he said afterward.