President Donald Trump campaigned in North Carolina on Wednesday for a Republican Senate candidate who is trailing his Democratic opponent in opinion polls before the midterm elections, accusing Democrats of being soft on crime and embracing communism.
Those themes are likely to be central to Trump’s promised series of appearances across the country to bolster his party ahead of the November 3 vote.
All 435 congressional seats and 34 of the Senate’s 100 seats will be up for grabs, and Democrats are favoured to regain control of the House while forecasts expect a close race for the Senate majority.
North Carolina was his first major campaign stop since the Republican Party’s midterm convention last week, when he repeatedly sought to portray Democrats as extreme and out of touch on cultural matters while promoting his hard-line stance on immigration, a signature issue that twice helped vault him to the White House.
Trump sought to help Michael Whatley, who previously chaired the Republican National Committee, close a polling gap against former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
Trump predicted electoral victory while falsely accusing Democrats of embracing communist ideology, a charge Democrats reject as a deliberate misrepresentation of their policies.
“You’re going to crush the communists, and that’s what they are, they’re communists ... We will not be a socialist nation. I was right. They’re going for ‘communist’ nation,” he said.
A screen showed photos of what he said were some of the 3,500 North Carolina inmates who were freed during Cooper’s time as governor in a 2021 Covid-era settlement that reduced the state’s prison population.
“Roy Cooper wants migrant criminals like these set loose on North Carolina streets with sanctuary city policies. Michael Whatley wants them executed, arrested, or deported,” Trump said during his one-hour appearance.
A Cooper campaign spokesperson rejected Trump’s characterisation, saying Cooper, a former governor and attorney general for North Carolina, spent his career ‘putting rapists and violent criminals behind bars and signing tough on crime laws.’
“These attacks are false,” the spokesperson said.
Trump remains a powerful force with the Republican base, but Whatley will also need to win over North Carolina’s large bloc of swing and unaffiliated voters as Republicans confront rising concerns over affordability that have strained Trump’s support among more moderate voters.
Trump repeated what he told Republicans at the convention in Dallas last week – to ‘pretend that I’m on the ballot’ – even though he is not seeking election.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in the past week found Trump’s approval rating at 35 per cent, up from a record-low 33pc in the previous poll.
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