CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- President Barack Obama on Tuesday vouched for Hillary Clinton's trustworthiness and dedication, making his first outing on the campaign stump for his former secretary of state.

Obama was in campaign form, rolling up his shirt sleeves and declaring he's "ready to pass the baton."

"I'm here today because I believe in Hillary Clinton," he said. "I have had a front-row seat to her judgment and her commitment."

Shortly before the pair flew to Charlotte together, FBI Director James Comey announced he would not recommend charges against Clinton for her email practices during her tenure as secretary of state.

The White House declined to comment on Comey's findings, saying the investigation was not formally closed and that it did not want to appear to be influencing prosecutors.

Clinton and Obama did not veer from their display of unity. Welcomed by a screaming crowd of supporters, the president led chants of "Hillary!" as they stood onstage under banners reading "Stronger Together."

"I can tell you this, Hillary Clinton has been tested," Obama said, interrupted repeatedly by the cheering crowd. "There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton, ever. And that's the truth. That's the truth."

Obama said voters face a choice between "some imaginary past, or whether we are going to reach for the future." And he said that Clinton was a candidate who did not fear what the future has to offer.

"She believes that it is ours to shape," he said. "Hillary understands that we make our own destiny, as long as we're together."

Referring to their battle in the 2008 Democratic primary race, Obama said, "We may have gone toe-to-toe, from coast to coast, but we stood shoulder to shoulder for the ideals that we share."

Speaking before the president, Clinton told the crowd that, with Obama's help, she intended to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. She described Obama as a "statesman" with "depth, heart and humility" and said he had prevailed despite an array of obstructions in Washington.

And, she added, "He knows a thing or two about winning elections."

Clinton lauded Obama's presidency and drew a sharp contrast with Trump, eliciting loud boos when she asked: "Can you imagine him, sitting in the Oval Office, the next time the world faces a crisis? Donald Trump is simply unqualified and temperamentally unfit."

Later, Obama and Clinton dropped in unannounced at Midwood Smokehouse, a barbecue place in Charlotte. Obama offered a hug to a woman who tried to pay for his meal, and Clinton chatted up a woman and her preschool-age child.

The president cast voters' negative impressions of Clinton as a result of her many years in the political spotlight. He also noted that he had benefited from Americans' desire for a fresh face.

"Sometimes we take somebody who's been in the trenches and fought the good fight and been steady for granted," Obama said, as Clinton sat behind him. "As a consequence, that means sometimes Hillary doesn't get the credit she deserves. But the fact is Hillary is steady and Hillary is true."

Likewise, Clinton said Obama doesn't get the credit he deserves for overseeing the nation's economic recovery. She shared memories of her four years in the administration, such as crashing a meeting with the Chinese at a global climate summit and being in the Situation Room during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

"He's made difficult, even unpopular, decisions for the good of our country," she said.

Obama and Clinton originally planned to make their first campaign appearance together in Wisconsin, a Democratic-leaning state where Clinton lost in this year's primary to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Campaign aides had viewed that as a way to forge Democratic unity after the primary and to consolidate the party's voters in a state Clinton needs to carry in November.

The planned June 15 rally was postponed after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

North Carolina was chosen instead because of its increasingly diverse population, which helped Obama capture the state's 15 electoral votes in 2008. He lost the state to Mitt Romney in 2012.

Aides say the president plans to hit the campaign trail repeatedly, especially in October.

Trump's response

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee didn't let the Democrats' outing go unanswered. As the rally began, Trump released a statement casting the joint appearance as an example of a "rigged" political system.

"It was no accident that charges were not recommended against Hillary the exact same day as President Obama campaigns with her for the first time," Trump said.

Later, at a rally in Raleigh, the New Yorker said Clinton put the "entire country in danger."

"Her judgment is horrible," Trump said, adding, "She will be such a lousy president."

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined Trump, who introduced him as "somebody respected by everybody."

Corker said he'd had a "pretty remarkable day" with Trump, spending time with the candidate's children and watching how he treats the people who work for him.

Trump also took time to deliver harsh words for Obama, arguing he should be at the White House working to defeat Islamic State militants and dealing with other issues instead of joining Clinton on the campaign trail.

"We've got a person in the White House that's having a lot of fun," he said. "I watched them today. It's like a carnival act. A lot of fun."

Trump also praised former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's ruthlessness, saying he killed terrorists "so good."

"Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? ... But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good," Trump said. "They didn't read them the rights, they didn't talk. They were a terrorist, it was over."

Democrat Hillary Clinton's senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan responded in a statement, "Donald Trump's praise for brutal strongmen seemingly knows no bounds."

During her rally with Obama, Clinton chiding Trump for having questioned the president's birthplace.

She said Obama was a man who "I was honored to stand with in the good times and the bad times, someone who has never forgotten where he came from. And Donald, if you're out there tweeting, it's Hawaii."

Obama, too, got in a dig at Trump.

"Anybody can tweet, but nobody actually knows what it takes" to be president, he said.

The comments about Trump's Twitter account came after the Republican businessman posted an anti-Clinton tweet that appeared to depict the shape of the Star of David atop a pile of cash with the words "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!"

Trump, in a statement Monday evening, said it was "ridiculous" to portray the tweet as anti-Semitic and suggested that Clinton and her allies were using the matter to distract from her own recent campaign troubles.

Trump said the tweet showed "a basic star, often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior," as part of an effort to convey that "Crooked Hillary is the most corrupt candidate ever."

His official account had tweeted -- then deleted -- the image Saturday before posting a new version with a circle in place of the six-point star.

Addressing the origins of the tweet for the first time, the Trump campaign's social media director, Dan Scavino, said in a statement posted on Trump's Facebook page Monday evening that he had lifted it from an anti-Clinton Twitter feed and had never intended to offend anyone.

"The social media graphic used this weekend was not created by the campaign nor was it sourced from an anti-Semitic site. It was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear," he wrote.

He said the star, which he described as a sheriff's badge, "fit with the theme of corrupt Hillary and that is why I selected it."

"As the social media director for the campaign, I would never offend anyone and therefore chose to remove the image," he added.

The image appears to have first been posted by the now-deleted FishBoneHead1 account, which featured a series of anti-Clinton posts. The image also had appeared on a white supremacist message board filled with anti-Semitic messages.

Scavino did not respond to a follow-up question about whether FishBoneHead1 was the "anti-Hillary" Twitter account he was referring to.

Earlier Monday, Sarah Bard, director of Jewish outreach for Clinton's campaign, said in a statement that "Trump's use of a blatantly anti-Semitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign" was part of a pattern by him.

"Now, not only won't he apologize for it, he's peddling lies and blaming others," she added. "Trump should be condemning hate, not offering more campaign behavior and rhetoric that engages extremists."

In Trump's statement, he accused Clinton's campaign of using the tweet to try to "divert attention from the dishonest behavior of herself and her husband." He cited her "missing emails" and former President Bill Clinton's impromptu meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch as her agency oversees the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Trump has long professed his support for Israel, and his daughter converted to Judaism before her marriage. But he has come under scrutiny for repeatedly re-tweeting posts from white supremacists' accounts and for not immediately renouncing the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Kathleen Hennessey and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press and by Amy Chozick and Michael D. Shear of The New York Times.

A Section on 07/06/2016