Shortly after Vice President Mike Pence teased an in-person appearance by his boss, President Trump arrived in Charlotte to fire up the couple hundred delegates gathered there to conduct the convention’s official business.

“This is the most important election in the history of our country,” Trump said. “This is the biggest, this is it. Our country can go in a horrible, horrible direction, or an even greater direction. And before the plague came in from China, that’s where we were going. We were going in a direction like we had never seen.”

Trump will formally accept his nomination during a primetime speech later this week from the White House lawn. Later today, he will tour a North Carolina vegetable-growing and packaging operation the administration set up to help people struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic.

His visit with Pence to North Carolina today is somewhat of a consolation prize for the city of Charlotte, which had spent two years planning for the Republican National Convention before organizers shifted to a largely virtual format due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump campaign attempted to retain some form of a traditional convention with a cheering audience, unlike the Democrats who delivered all their speeches to mostly empty rooms while delegates watched entirely from home.