President Donald Trump is holding a campaign rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, on Wednesday alongside Michael Whatley, the Republican Senate candidate hoping to deny former Governor Roy Cooper a return to statewide office. The event, reported by Breitbart News, puts the president on stage in a battleground state where the Senate race has turned sharply on crime and public safety.
Whatley has made Cooper’s record on prisoner releases the centerpiece of his attacks, arguing that the former governor exposed North Carolinians to violent offenders during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an August interview with Breitbart News, Whatley said flatly that “Roy Cooper has blood on his hands.”
The charge is rooted in the thousands of inmates released from state custody under Cooper’s administration as officials sought to reduce crowding and limit the spread of the coronavirus inside prisons. Whatley framed the releases in stark terms, describing the people let out as “the worst of the worst” — a group he said included rapists, pedophiles, and murderers. “We’re talking the worst of the worst,” he told Breitbart. “We’re talking rapists. We’re talking pedophiles. We’re talking murderers out of North Carolina jails because he didn’t want them to get COVID.”
A Charlotte Killing Becomes the Flashpoint
Whatley has tied that policy directly to the killing of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee whose death on a Charlotte light rail car drew national attention. According to Whatley’s account, Zarutska finished a shift at a pizzeria around 11 p.m. on a Friday night one year ago and boarded a train, where Decarlos Brown Jr. attacked and killed her without provocation.
“That monster should not have been on the streets. That monster should not have been on that light rail car, and that beautiful young lady should be alive today,” Whatley said. “And her blood is on Roy Cooper’s hands.”
Whatley also pressed Cooper to account for the releases themselves, noting that the former governor has “never offered an explanation of why he let these criminals out of jail.” The line of attack appears designed to keep the Senate contest focused on the consequences of pandemic-era criminal justice decisions rather than on the broader national issues that typically dominate midterm and presidential-year rallies.
Cooper Pushes Back
Cooper has not retreated from the issue. Faced with criticism over his record on prisoner releases, the former governor doubled down and claimed that some people were actually upset he had not released more people while serving as governor.
The exchange sets up a familiar dynamic in North Carolina, where Cooper built a durable political brand over two terms in the governor’s mansion and now faces a Republican field eager to nationalize the race. Trump’s presence in Gastonia signals that the White House and the party’s Senate campaign apparatus see the seat as central to their hopes of holding or expanding their majority.
Gastonia sits just west of Charlotte, the state’s largest city and the site of the light rail killing that Whatley has invoked repeatedly. For a candidate working to consolidate Republican support and appeal to suburban voters outside Charlotte, the location and the message align: public safety, the pandemic’s policy legacy, and a Democratic opponent with a long record to defend.
The rally gives Whatley a national platform alongside the president as he works to close the gap with Cooper, who remains one of the best-known Democrats in the state. Whether the prisoner-release argument moves voters beyond the party’s base — or simply hardens existing divisions — will become clear as the race enters its final stretch.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/16/watch-donald-trump-holds-rally-in-north-carolina/