Brandon Kingdollar, NC Newsline

Former U.S. President Donald Trump falsely accused his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris of abandoning North Carolina residents impacted by Hurricane Helene in a Greenville rally Monday afternoon — one of many distortions he made after his first visit to the western part of the state post-Helene.

“When the people of North Carolina were stranded and drowning in Hurricane Helene, Kamala Harris was at a glitzy fundraiser in a city that she destroyed, San Francisco,” Trump said. “When North Carolina needed help, Kamala Harris was nowhere to be found.”

While Harris did attend a fundraiser at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco in the days after Helene struck North Carolina, she also made multiple visits to the disaster zone in the week that followed — at one point helping pack aid kits at a distribution center in western North Carolina, the Associated Press reported. ...

North Carolina set a new all-time record for early voting with a surge of more than 350,000 voters on the first day of open polls.

The State Board of Elections reported 353,166 voters Thursday, narrowly beating out the 2020 record of 348,559 ballots — a staggering shift in enthusiasm from the start of the campaign, when voters seemed to largely dread an expected rematch between a pair of familiar presidential candidates.

That dynamic turned on its head in July with the exit of President Joe Biden from the race and the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris, who ignited enthusiasm in Democrats and trepidation in Republicans — enough to help drive a historic start to the 2024 race in the Tar Heel state. ...