GREENVILLE, N.C. — Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani asked the crowd at the Greenville Convention Center on Tuesday if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton gets large crowds as he introduced Donald Trump. The republican presidential nominee touched upon many issues throughout the evening including national security, immigration, and Clinton's email scandal.
"We will never fix our rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place," Trump said. "We need change."
It has been a busy week for politics in the Tar Heel State, with Mike Pence making an appearance in Winston-Salem last week, senator Tim Kaine in Wilmington and former president Bill Clinton in Durham. Trump has stated in the past that the race to the White House will go through North Carolina.
"We're going to bring these jobs back to North Carolina and we're not going to allow our companies to leave North Carolina," he said. "There will be consequences if they do so."
The Republican nominee didn't hold back when talking about the Hillary Clinton FBI investigation. As he ran through the FBI documents, the crowd responded with chants of “Lock her up.” Trump told the audience that Clinton’s conduct deems her unfit to run for office.
“The new revelations about Hillary Clinton make more clear than ever that she fails to meet the minimum standard for running for public office,” Trump said.
In addition to the Clinton scandal, Trump highlighted immigration and the proposed construction of a wall along the border of Mexico. After a meeting with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto last week, Trump has insisted that the United States will not pay for the wall. When he asked the audience who would pay, the crowd responded in unison, “Mexico!” He also told the crowd that he would instruct the Department of State to suspend Syrian refugee resettlement in the United States and devise a plan to construct a “safe zone” in that region.
For East Carolina University sophomore Hunter Marketto, who is an independent voter, the email scandal could cause him to lean toward a vote for Donald Trump.
“There is no excuse,” Marketto said. “She is not above the law. She is not above the constitution and the law and justice system of the United States of America. That’s inexcusable.”
Marketto said he is still moving back and forth between candidates, but said that it’s important to do research and find “who lines up with your values.”
Melinda Hudson, a long-time volunteer for the Trump campaign, said the answer to the issues Trump touched on is unity.
“It’s not just certain lives matter, all lives matter,” Hudson said. “Even over the past year, there’s been so much more diversity. We can’t win that way. We have to be together.”
Hudson expressed her concerns for a future with Clinton as president, but believes that Trump is the best candidate to ensure that Trump will rebuild America’s infrastructure.
“He wants us to all have the same opportunities, and I believe that can happen," she said.