Former President Donald Trump made his final plea to voters in North Carolina Monday morning, the day before Election Day, when he faces Vice-President Kamala Harris, at a rally at the Dorton Arena at the North Carolina Fairgrounds in Raleigh.
It follows a similar pattern from when he ran in 2016, when Raleigh was his last stop in the state before he was elected.
This was also the last rally the 45th President would ever have in the Tar Heel State.
Trump was also joined by his son, Donald Trump Jr., US Sen. Ted Budd, Dan Bishop, Brad Knott, Allen Swain, Marco Rubio, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Crowds of people filled the arena, some even dressed in a neon green reflective vest to symbolize a garbage man, poking fun at the comments that President Joe Biden made about Trump supporters when he called them garbage. Trump would later appear in Wisconsin with a similar vest in a garbage truck with the Trump logo affixed to it.
“Hello, beautiful, beautiful North Carolina,” Trump told the crowd, sounding hoarse. “This is the end of a journey, but a new one will be starting, and that is the one we want to partake in, which is basically to make America great again.”
He said the election is “ours to lose,” stating his campaign is leading in every swing state which he said is unheard of in the Republican Party.
“Tomorrow, you have to stand up and tell Kamala you’ve had enough, you can’t take any more. Kamala, you’re fired,” Trump said.
Much like his stop in Rocky Mount last week and others across the country, Trump asked if people were better off than they were four years ago, to which the crowd resounded loudly “No!”
He said during the last four years, the country lost a lot of the American Dream.
Focusing on the economy, Trump said it was time to rescue it from the last four years of “economic hell” under Biden and Harris. Under their administration, he said families have faced over $30,000 in higher prices.
He also pointed out the dismal jobs report for October, in which just 12,000 new jobs were created, 30,000 private sector jobs were lost, and nearly 150,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force. Also, nearly 100,000 manufacturing jobs were lost this year.
In addition, Trump talked about the nearly 1 million jobs that were not created and had to be backtracked a few months ago, thanks to two whistleblowers.
While he is promising tax cuts, no tax on tips or Social Security, he claimed that Harris will raise taxes by $3,000 on every family if she is elected.
Trump also promised to cut energy prices by 50%, remarking that North Carolina has some high energy prices.
He turned his attention to the early voting records that were broken in the state and his amazement at the long lines of people ready to vote in western North Carolina after the devastation they suffered from Hurricane Helene.
“These people have been wiped out, the houses, giant trees 10 feet in diameter like they’ve been ripped out like they were toothpicks,” he said. “Concrete foundations laying down the road. I’ve never seen anything like it. They said we’ll be lucky if we get 25- 50%. The lines were through the roof.”
Carolina Journal caught up with Chris, a woman from Lake Lure who felt it was important for her to be at the rally.
“We saw the devastation, and we saw what the federal government did not do,” she told CJ. ‘Nonprofits have been the answer. There’s a lot of nonprofit agencies neighbor helping neighbor. It took over three weeks for FEMA to set up a tent in Lake Lure. They set up their headquarters in Durham. People can’t get down their street let alone to Durham.”
She said organizations like Samaritan’s Purse were there within days, and Trump himself showed up and would have done a much better job of helping out the storm victims if he had been president.
“They (Biden and Harris) supposedly flew over the area, but they didn’t actually stop,” she said. “It means a lot to the people that are there that someone recognizes them.”
A good portion of his remarks focused on the open border and the continuation of building the wall that was stopped when Biden took office.
Trump mentioned the increasing crime from illegal migrants in North Carolina, including a man who was arrested in Charlotte for stalking a woman and trying to forcibly rape her in a public bathroom, and an illegal migrant from Venezuela who stabbed a man to death three months ago in Wilmington three months ago, just four days after he was arrested domestic violence.
“These terrible atrocities are happening every day in our cities and towns,” Trump said. They’re going after young girls. They’re going after old men. They’re going after anybody that moves. They don’t care.”
He added that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 upon taking office. If an illegal criminal migrant comes back into the country, an automatic 10-year jail sentence would be issued, and the death penalty would be issued, and all sanctuary cities would be banned.
Among his promises if elected, Trump said that he would end the war in Ukraine and the Middle East between Israel and Gaza, avoid having World War III, support police, strengthen and modernize the military, build a defense shield over the country, get rid of Critical Race Theory and “transgender insanity” out of our schools, keep men out of women’s sports, protect religious liberty and the right to keep and bear arms.
“Hopefully tomorrow, we’re gonna make America great again, one glorious nation under God,” he said. “We will never give in, we will never give up, we will never back down, and we will never ever surrender. Together, we will fight, fight, fight, and win, win, win. November 5th will be the most important day in the history of our country.”