MORRISVILLE, N.C. _ Trailing in recent polls and blamed for his administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump visited a Research Triangle Park company Monday and lauded progress toward treatments and a potential vaccine.
"We will achieve a victory over the virus by unleashing American scientific genius," Trump said at the beginning of his remarks at Fujifilm Diosynth in Morrisville.
Fujifilm Diosynth is manufacturing a vaccine for the biotech company Novavax, which was awarded $1.6 billion from the federal government as part of an effort to speed up coronavirus vaccine development.
Operation Warp Speed is the Trump administration's effort to manufacture vaccines as they progress through scientific tests in order to have them ready if they are found successful through clinical trials. One potential vaccine has entered Phase 3 clinical trials, and Trump said more, including the Novavax product, could soon join.
"We've shaved years over the time it takes to develop a vaccine. In some cases, many years," Trump said. "Tremendous progress has been made."
There is currently no vaccine for the coronavirus.
Trump had brief tours of the facility before and after addressing reporters and taking questions. Trump wore a mask on his short tour after speaking.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in North Carolina surpassed 114,000 and nearly 1,800 residents have died since the pandemic first hit the state in March.
Trump's visit came less than 100 days before the Nov. 3 presidential election and less than six weeks before absentee mail-in ballots are sent to voters in North Carolina, considered one of the race's key battleground states.
Polls, including one released Monday morning, show Trump trailing in the state, which he carried in 2016 en route to an Electoral College victory. He downplayed those public numbers, saying his internal polls indicate he is leading in the state.
Trump was greeted by hundreds of supporters along with vocal protesters on his drive in and out of the facility. As Trump's limousine rolled into the Fujifilm campus, the president appeared to wave to the crowd, which flooded into Davis Drive.
Natalia Barnack, 18, of Cary, gushed about the experience.
"I was very excited to be able to see him, especially since this is the first election I'll be able to vote," she said. "It's a very empowering feeling. Definitely one for the books."
Several members of North Carolina's congressional delegation flew to Raleigh-Durham International Airport with Trump aboard Air Force One. Republican Reps. Richard Hudson, Dan Bishop, David Rouzer and Greg Murphy were on the plane for the short 30-minute flight.
Trump was greeted upon arrival by Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, the Republican candidate for governor, U.S. Rep. Mark Walker and North Carolina legislative leaders Tim Moore and Phil Berger. All four were wearing masks. U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis attended Trump's event at Fujifilm.
Several administration officials also made the trip, including senior advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and trade adviser Peter Navarro.
Novavax CEO Stanley Erck and Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies CEO Martin Meeson were also there.
The Novavax candidate is already in Phase 1 trials and the company anticipates moving into a larger Phase 2 study next month. The final Phase 3 trial would come sometime in the fall. Novavax has been in business for 33 years, but has yet to bring a product to market, The New York Times reported.
Inside its facilities in RTP, Fujifilm Diosynth has already begun manufacturing the main component for the protein-based vaccine candidate, named NVX-CoV2373. The batches of the vaccine created in North Carolina would be used in the Phase 3 trial, which would include up to 30,000 subjects, the company said in a release.
Fujifilm has more than 500 employees based in RTP, and its facilities there go back to the mid-1990s.
A vaccine is seen as critical to getting the country back to normal. The United States surpassed 4 million coronavirus cases last week and more than 147,000 people in the country have died. The virus has led to economic shutdowns and school closures. Many children will not be returning to classrooms this fall.
Trump announced Operation Warp Speed in April, a public-private venture to deliver 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021.
"We cannot afford to lose even one day," Navarro, the administration's Defense Production Act policy coordinator, told the News & Observer of the effort.
Ahead of the visit, hundreds of supporters lined Davis Drive cheering for Trump, urging his reelection. Roughly 300 people crowded on the hot asphalt shoulder outside Fujifilm Diosynth, calling for the nation to reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic and for an end to protests.
Few among the crowd wore masks.
"I am out here because I want to see our Constitution upheld and I want to see law and order restored," said Michele Morrow of Cary. "I'm a nurse and I believe North Carolina can reopen. I believe President Trump is going to give the power back to the people."
The crowd wore American flag-themed shorts, "Make America Great Again" hats and Space Force T-shirts, waving at passing cars and encouraging honks.
As the president's arrival grew nearer, the number of protesters grew to about 25. They chanted "no vaccine, no reopening" to the beat of a snare drum. One of them, Morrisville Councilwoman Anne Robotti, held a sign that read "130,000 dead is too many," referencing the number of Americans who have died from the coronavirus.
"I'm out here because of blatant hypocrisy from this administration," Dianne Huggins said. "For every one of Trump's tweets, there is an equal and opposite tweet. If he golfs all the time, there's a tweet saying Barack Obama golfed too much."
As Trump's limousine rolled into the Fujifilm campus, some supporters began to pray out loud while protesters, whose numbers grew to about 100, gestured with middle fingers and chanted "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA."
About 100 Black Lives Matter protesters remained outside Fujifilm after the president's supporters went home.
They stood facing police and chanted the names of Keith Collins, Akiel Denkins, Soheil Mojarrad, people killed by Raleigh police in recent years. A handful of Trump supporters among them waved flags and chanted "God Bless America."
With his supporters mostly gone, Trump exited the campus to the sight of a long line of raised middle fingers.
Just as those who lined up to catch a glimpse of the motorcade had different reactions, so, too, did Republicans and Democrats.
"President Trump's leadership is producing real results in the fight against COVID-19, which will help every North Carolinian," NCGOP press secretary Tim Wigginton said in a statement. "President Trump's strong leadership spotlights Governor Roy Cooper's failure to lead and continual commitment to remain in his basement while people needlessly suffer."
While Republicans embraced Trump and his visit, Democrats used the occasion to slam his response to the coronavirus, holding a news conference via Zoom.
"This President is coming here to Wake County where we do such great work in science and technology and drug experiments to basically do a photo op and take credit for the hard work that we've been doing in this county and that our people are doing to help not just the people here in North Carolina, but people all over the world with a potential vaccine," said Deborah Ross, the Democratic nominee in North Carolina's 2nd Congressional District, which includes much of Wake County.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, issued a statement Monday about Trump's visit.
"As COVID-19 cases in North Carolina continue to rise, North Carolinians deserve better than the inaction we have seen from President Trump and his administration," Biden said. "The magnitude of this crisis was preventable. Yet Donald Trump has failed to take accountability for his shameful response and instead placed blame on everyone but his own administration."
The Republican National Committee, in its own news release, criticized Biden's record on public health as part of the Obama administration and said that, "President Trump is leading an all hands on deck response to Coronavirus from testing, to supplies, to vaccines."
In a regular election cycle, the presidential contenders would be crisscrossing North Carolina, holding rallies and events. But the coronavirus has all but stopped in-person campaign events, including both parties' national conventions.
It was Trump's first visit to the state since he canceled a portion of the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Florida, due to safety concerns caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump had moved the RNC from Charlotte to Florida after North Carolina would not guarantee a full crowd at the Spectrum Center due to the coronavirus. But a spike in cases in Florida led Trump to cancel the convention.
Charlotte will host Trump's official renomination by a small group of delegates in August, but the president is not expected to attend, The Charlotte Observer reported.
An NBC News/Marist poll taken between July 14 and 22, which was before Trump's cancellation of the Jacksonville events, found that just 32% of North Carolina voters believed state leaders were wrong to insist on safety protocols for the Charlotte convention.
That same poll, released Monday by NBC News/Marist, also found that Trump is currently trailing Biden by 7 points in North Carolina 51% to 44% among registered voters. The margin of error for the poll was 4% points.
Trump said his polls indicated that he was leading in North Carolina, along with other swing states such as Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania.
"I think our poll numbers are very good," Trump said. He said polls showed him losing swing states in 2016 "and I won them all." He called some of the public polls "suppression polls" and said the enthusiasm for him, as measured by boaters and bikers holding big parades of support, indicate that the public is behind him.
In March, the NBC poll reported Biden had a 4-point advantage against the president.
Across all polls taken in North Carolina, Biden had an average lead of 3 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics.
