WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail this week, but while taking very different detours — one to handle sensitive presidential tasks and the other to appear before a criminal jury.

Biden was in North Carolina on Thursday to address supporters in the coastal town of Wilmington, which has the same name as the Delaware city where he has permanent residence. But he was courting North Carolinians, not his fellow Delawarians, as he and his campaign aides continued insisting he could win the Tar Heel State in November.

His expected general election foe, Trump, was back in court Thursday after a Wednesday spent campaigning. Trump addressed reporters Thursday by calling the criminal hush money trial a “ridiculous show trial” and a “Biden trial.”

Both pitched their economic visions to voters — and, in Trump’s case, to courthouse reporters. Biden weaved parts of his stump speech into an official event about clean drinking water.

“Until the United States of America deals with this, how can we say we’re the leading nation in the world? For God’s sake, we’re better than this. … There is no safe level of lead” in drinking water, he said, announcing federal funding to address lead pipe removal and other clean water projects in North Carolina. “Folks, this is about safety, but it’s also about basic fairness. … Studies show communities of color have been hardest hit.”

He held the Wilmington event after handling presidential duties, first delivering remarks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House about campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza that have sometimes turned violent. From there, he jetted to Charlotte, North Carolina, to honor several law enforcement officers who were shot dead there earlier this week.

Biden used his morning remarks to condemn threats or hate speech against Jewish and Arab American students, including Palestinian American students. “There should be no place on any campus, no place in America, for antisemitism, threats of violence against Jewish students,” he said.

“There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, antisemitism, Islamophobia, discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong,” he said. “There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American. … There’s a right to protest,” he added, “but not the right to create chaos.”

The importance of Wilmington and the county in which it sits, New Hanover, is tough to overstate as Biden campaign officials contend the president could win the Tar Heel State in November. Trump narrowly won the state, but Biden was the winner in New Hanover, 50.2% to 48%. With Thursday’s visit, the Biden campaign isn’t taking the area for granted.

And for good reason.

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