Election 2020: Melania Trump delivers pointed political attack on trail

At a rally in Lansing, Michigan, Trump pleaded to a packed crowd filled with hundreds of supporters to get out the vote for the Republican ticket and acknowledged his presence in the state signals some concern about his winning reelection. 

“Everybody -- look, this is the most important election in the history of our country, ever -- or I wouldn't be standing here like this,” Trump said. 

Calling the polls which put him behind “fake,” Trump predicted a “great red wave” in November. 

“This Election Day, you must stop the anti-American radicals by delivering Joe Biden and the far Left a thundering defeat,” Trump said. 

He also continued to lament media coverage of COVID-19 and suggested it's intended to harm his reelection chances -- as the state of Michigan grapples with record-high numbers of new coronavirus infections and 1,332 hospitalizations as of Monday. 

He called Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, a “disaster” who has “got to open up the state.” His criticism comes after authorities revealed earlier this month they thwarted a monthslong plan to allegedly kidnap the Democratic governor before the November election.

At the top of his remarks, Trump claimed he was once named Michigan’s “Man of the Year” -- but there’s no proof any such award exists. 

In 2016, Trump won Michigan by the narrowest margin of any state by 10,704 votes.

Beginning Wednesday, the Biden-Harris campaign will begin a three-day bus tour.

The tour will include appearances by members of the Texas congressional delegation, elected officials, Democratic candidates and special guests, according to a news release.

Wednesday there are stops planed for Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene, Fort Worth and Dallas.

In her first solo campaign event of 2020, first lady Melania Trump delivered her most political speech to date in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, blasting Democrats for attempting to divide the country, she said, and defending the administration for choosing to move forward -- “not backward”-- in its pandemic response. 

Deeming her husband a “fighter,” the first lady began her prepared remarks by defending his social media use and applauding how Americans can hear “directly and instantly” from their president "for the first time in history." 

“I don’t always agree the way he says things, but it is important to him that he speaks directly to the people he serves,” she said to an enthusiastic crowd of 300 supporters packed in a barn in Atglen. 

Echoing her husband, she then ripped into Democrats, saying they are invoking fear and attempting to divide Americans amid the pandemic that has claimed more than 225,000 Americans lives. 

She went on to slam Democrats for what she called a “sham impeachment” while she said Trump took “decisive actions” to slow the spread of the pandemic.

“This sham was led by opposition and their display of hatred is on display to this day,” she said to roaring applause. 

Urging Pennsylvanians to get out the vote, she painted Democrats as a looming threat to "traditional values," while pitching her husband as the anti-politician candidate who will keep American families safe.

Although the first lady herself did not model Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines by wearing a mask, she did in closing ask the audience to follow the CDC guidelines to slow the spread. Most attendees were wearing masks -- which were encouraged but not required, according to release on the event -- and had been asked on the loudspeaker to socially distance. However, the crowd bunched up around the stage for the first lady’s remarks.

Former senior counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, who left the administration in August, introduced the first lady for her appearance -- as she did in 2016 when Melania made a campaign stop in the state and Conway was Trump’s campaign manager.

Biden pitched himself as the unity candidate from Warm Springs, Georgia -- a tiny, but historically significant, town in Meriwether County where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited for polio treatments and where he died. Biden channeled the Democratic hero in his remarks focused on healing the country.

“This place, Warm Springs, is a reminder that, although broken, each of us can be healed,” Biden said.

“We can overcome the suffering virus. And yes, we can restore our soul and save our country.”

The former vice president lamented the fact that on Monday the U.S. had its highest number of new cases since the pandemic began and slammed Trump for once saying of the country’s death toll, “It is what it is.”

“It is what it is because he is who he is,” Biden said. “As a president, I will never waive the white flag of surrender.”

He repeated that he is running to serve all Americans -- not just those in his party -- and ended with a message that he is “ready to act.”

"With our voices and our vote, we must free ourselves from the forces of darkness, from the forces of division, and the forces of yesterday, from the forces that pull us apart, hold us down and hold us back," Biden said. "If we do so, we’ll once more become one nation, under god, indivisible, a nation united, a nation strengthened, a nation healed."