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.
“I’m not bragging, but when I’m on the ticket Republicans have always done really well,” Trump told supporters, speaking at the Gastonia municipal airport. “I just want you to go out and pretend I’m on the ticket, because essentially I am.”
The rally, Trump’s first campaign event since the Republican party’s unusual midterm convention in Dallas last week where he debuted a similar message, was aimed at energizing the Make American Great Again (Maga) faithful behind Whatley, who is running in a crucial battleground race against the Democratic former governor Roy Cooper.
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 for the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
To win control of the chamber, Democrats must prevail in at least four Republican-held seats. The president’s appearance in North Carolina on Wednesday underscored Republicans’ challenge in the state, 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, claiming he was a “radical” more closely aligned with his party’s left wing.
“He tries to pretend he’s a moderate,” Trump said of Cooper. “He’s not.”
During his hour-long remarks, Trump lavished praise on Whatley, his handpicked choice for Senate. The former Republican National Committee chair was a “ball-breaker” and “one of the greatest men I ever worked with in government”, the president said.
“I had my choice of the whole country,” Trump said. “I chose Michael Whatley.”
Whatley enthusiastically returned the embrace, praising Trump as the “greatest president of our lifetime”.
By leaving no doubt about his loyalty to the president, Whatley is hoping Trump’s command of the Maga base can translate into broader support in a state where independent voters make up a large share of the electorate and where concerns about high prices, the economy and the administration’s handling of the war in Iran have complicated his party’s political prospects.
Donald Trump greets Michael Whatley in November. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP In Gastonia, Trump sought to simplify the choice for voters. He cast the Senate contest as a referendum on Cooper’s governorship, arguing that the election was about “safety” and “bad management”.
He invoked the killing 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, Trump falsely claimed that the man arrested and charged with her murder, Decarlos Brown Jr, had been released from prison by Cooper.
Dozens of mugshots appeared on a video screen as Trump bashed Cooper as a “murderer protector” and explicitly likened his playbook to the notorious “Willie Horton” 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.
“Years ago in Massachusetts, there was a governor named Dukakis, Michael Dukakis, you remember, who had a very substantial lead for president,” Trump said. “He was going to win easily, but he allowed a man named Willie Horton out of jail. Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy. Same thing as this. Same exact thing.”
Trump said Whatley was the “candidate of law and order” who preferred that criminals be “executed, arrested or deported”.
Local Democrats held a news conference earlier on Wednesday to preempt some of Trump’s claims and denounce Whatley for supporting Trump’s agenda.
“Why would Whatley back a war that is driving up prices for North Carolina families at a time when it’s already too hard for us to get by?” the Democratic state senator Woodson Bradley said. “Let’s not find that out, North Carolina. He’s already shown us everything we need to know.”
In a reminder of the significant economic headwinds Republicans are facing, Trump 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”.
“They’re doing the wrong thing,” he said, repeating several times that interest rates were “too high”.
Robert Mackey contributed reporting