Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday, imploring North Carolina voters to “pretend I’m on the ticket” and “crush the communists” in the November elections at a rally in support of the Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley. Despite Trump’s deep unpopularity, Republicans hope to once again turn the president’s loyal following into a political force as the party confronts an unforgiving midterm landscape. With the Republican senator Thom Tillis retiring, Democrats see a rare opportunity to flip a seat in a state that has repeatedly dashed the party’s hopes in recent elections, but which could decide the balance of power in the Senate this November.
To win control of the Senate, Democrats must prevail in at least four Republican-held seats. In Gastonia, Trump sought to cast the Senate contest as a referendum on Cooper’s governorship, saying the election was about “safety” and “bad management”. From the stage, he invoked the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light rail train last year.
Describing the attack in gruesome detail, he falsely claimed that the man arrested and charged with her killing, Decarlos Brown Jr, had been released from prison by Cooper. He then showed dozens of mugshots on a video screen, explicitly comparing his attack on Cooper to the notorious “Willie Horton” attack ad used by George HW Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign against Michael Dukakis in a racially charged appeal to cast the Democratic nominee as weak on crime. Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy.
Same exact thing.” Trump said Whatley was the “candidate of law and order” who preferred criminals be “executed, arrested or deported”. Trump’s appearance underscored Republicans’ challenge in North Carolina, a place where Democrats have not won a Senate race since 2008 but where polls have consistently shown Cooper ahead of Whatley. Nodding to Cooper’s edge, Trump claimed there was a misconception about the former governor’s politics.
Ahead of the rally, local Democrats held a news conference to denounce Whatley for supporting Trump’s agenda. He’s already shown us everything we need to know.” By tying himself to the president, Whatley is hoping Trump’s command of the party’s base can translate into broader support in a state where independent voters make up a large share of the electorate and where concerns about prices, the economy and the administration’s handling of the war in Iran have complicated the political landscape. Yet in a reminder of the significant economic headwinds Trump is facing, he spent time attacking the Federal Reserve, which on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point, its first increase since 2023.
The Fed said persistent inflation warranted the move. Speaking to reporters on the tarmac before the rally, Trump called the central bank “very hostile” to him and said its officials were a “bunch of politicians”.
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