Donald Trump will use his weekend reprieve from the courtroom to campaign in North Carolina

By BILL BARROW
Associated Press

WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — On a weekend reprieve from the courtroom, former President Donald Trump is campaigning Saturday in North Carolina as he juggles legal troubles and his rematch against President Joe Biden.

Trump’s evening rally in Wilmington is his first since the start of his criminal hush money trial in Manhattan, and voters who gathered throughout the afternoon in this coastal city are standing by Trump and echoing his claims that multiple pending criminal indictments are an effort to take down the presumptive Republican nominee — and squelch the people first propelled Trump eight years ago and want to return him to the White House again.

“It’s political persecution, and if it were anybody else he wouldn’t have to be dealing with it,” said Christian Armstrong, a 28-year-old firefighter who lives in Wilmington and was attending his first Trump rally.

LeeAnn Coleman, a 42-year-old who is in a family restaurant business, said “it’s ludicrous that he’s having to do this at all,” rather than spend time focusing on “all the problems he wants to fix.”

Those sentiments validate or at least reflect Trump’s strategy to use his mandated court time to his advantage by folding the proceedings, the first time an American president has faced felony criminal charges, into the same populist, anti-establishment arguments that first fueled his rise eight years ago.

“They want to keep me off the campaign trail,” the candidate-turned-defendant insisted earlier this week in Harlem, where he visited a neighborhood convenience store and addressed a throng of media outside after spending the day at his own jury selection. Rather than pursue violent criminals, he alleged, “They go after Trump.”

The rally Saturday also underscores the importance of North Carolina, a presidential battleground that Trump won by less than 1.5 percentage points over Biden in 2020. That was the closest margin of any state Trump won. Saturday will be the second time in as many months that Trump has come to the state. Biden has traveled to North Carolina twice this year; Vice President Kamala Harris has been four times.

“The presidential race is going to run through North Carolina,” said Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, in a recent interview.

There is no precedent for the kind of campaign Trump now has to run — in North Carolina and nationally.

With opening arguments of his trial expected Monday, Trump will be confined to the courtroom for the immediate future, limiting his ability to see voters, fundraise and make calls. Biden, conversely, spent multiple days this week campaigning in Pennsylvania, another key battleground. Trump aides have promised weekend rallies and events on Wednesdays, the one weekday Trump’s trial is expected to be in recess. The former president’s campaign also has promised additional weeknight appearances around New York, like his trip to Harlem.

That schedule adds pressure for Trump to maximize his limited opportunities to reach voters and command media attention beyond his indictments.

To that end, Trump aides on Saturday amplified his calls to debate Biden, distributing a March post from the former president on his Truth Social platform in which he said he would agree to meet Biden on stage even if the events are “run by the Corrupt DNC, or their Subsidiary, the Commission on Presidential Debates.”

A video of Trump calling for debates also played on the big screen less than two hours before he was scheduled to take the stage. It was not immediately clear whether Trump would use his remarks later Saturday to challenge Biden again to debates.

Trump is expected to use the rally to boost North Carolina’s Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson. Trump has endorsed Robinson, calling the state’s first Black lieutenant governor “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Robinson faces Democrat Josh Stein, the current attorney general.

Cooper twice won governor’s races in the same years that Trump won North Carolina in the presidential contest. Cooper is barred from seeking a third term. Democrats have sought to tag Trump and Robinson together as too extreme for North Carolina, especially on abortion rights.

North Carolina is one of seven states that both the Trump and Biden campaigns have said they will dedicate significant campaign resources to winning. Trump has insisted he wants to widen the map, even into his native New York, which is heavily Democratic. Most Republicans, though, agree that Trump will have a difficult path to an Electoral College majority if Biden were to win North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes. Trump tacitly acknowledged North Carolina’s status by tapping then-state Republican Chairman Michael Whatley to lead his campaign’s effective takeover of the Republican National Committee.

In North Carolina, Biden’s campaign already has hired statewide leadership and field organizers for offices across the state. That’s on top of state party staff that began an organizing program last year ahead of municipal races and looking to this year’s statewide contests.

“We needed to build energy on the ground early,” said state Democratic Chairwoman Anderson Clayton, noting that the last Democratic presidential nominee to win North Carolina — Barack Obama in 2008 — had organized the state in a hotly contested primary campaign that ramped up the previous year.

Matt Mercer, spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, countered that veteran GOP staffers have been working in the state since the 2020 election cycle. Mercer said the GOP, from Trump to volunteers, will stress a family-first message around the economy and public safety.

Voters, Mercer said, “understand the importance of what those messages mean to them in their daily lives” and are “fed up” with Biden, “whether it’s with sky high inflation, the open southern border or the migrant crime crisis.” Cooper argued that Biden’s record — low unemployment, rising wages, stabilized inflation, infrastructure and green energy investments — will resonate with a geographically and demographically diverse state.

“Joe Biden did more in his first two years than most presidents hope to do in two terms,” Cooper said, adding that juxtaposing Biden’s accomplishments with Trump’s baggage will persuade enough voters to reelect the president.

Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, noted in a statement Saturday ahead of Trump’s visit the unabashed rightward turn North Carolina Republicans have made in recent years. The campaign cited a 2023 statewide ban on abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Cooper vetoed the measure but GOP lawmakers used their legislative supermajority — which was elected under gerrymandered maps drawn by Republicans — to override his veto.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that North Carolina now has 16 electoral votes, not 15.