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With two weeks before Election Day, President Donald Trump stumped Tuesday night in Greenville for U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley and 1st Congressional District candidate Laurie Buckhout.
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This is Trump’s second visit to North Carolina in as many months, having traveled to Whatley’s hometown of Gastonia in September and made headlines for calling North Carolina cities “blood-soaked killing fields.”
Whatley, 58, a Republican, faces former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat from Raleigh, who has led every poll since the two men entered the race in July 2025.
Buckhout, 65, a Republican from Edenton, is challenging Democratic incumbent Rep. Don Davis, 55, of Snow Hill.
Greenville is located just outside the state’s 1st district, a large rural area of northeastern North Carolina that Republican state lawmakers redrew to favor a win for their party, but is considered a “leans Democrat” district by The University of Virginia’s Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which shifted its rating in Democrats’ direction Tuesday.
Supporters began gathering at the Pitt-Greenville Airport before 3 p.m. to hear the Trump speech scheduled for 7 p.m.
Live updates from the event are below in chronological order.
Trump wrapped up his speech just after 9:30 p.m.
He began speaking around two hours ago, helping to stump for Whatley, Buckhout and Balkcom.
Gov. Josh Stein weighed in on Trump’s speech after Trump threatened the victims of Camp Lejeune’s contaminated water.
Trump announced earlier in the speech that he’s “fighting for our great veterans and taking care of those veterans who brought claims related to water contamination at Camp Lejeune. So tonight, I’m pleased to announce that my administration has delivered $1 billion in cash settlements to these veterans and their families, most of whom are based here.”
Trump said if Republicans win the House and Senate he will direct the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible. He added this has gone on too long.
“If we don’t win, there’s no money,” Trump said. “If we do win, you’re getting it. It’s going to be finally over with that nightmare that’s been going on for so many years.”
There’s ongoing litigation after members of the military and staff stationed at Camp Lejeune were exposed to contaminated water that has led to cancer and deaths.
Stein posted on social media after that part of Trump’s speech: “Real leaders fight for the people, not for power. To condition doing the right thing by sick North Carolinians on who wins the election is foul.”
Trump said he came to North Carolina for two things: “I want to tell you how bad Cooper is, and I want to tell you how great Michael Whatley is.”
He credited Whatley, who led the Republican National Committee during Trump’s 2024 victory, for “one of the finest, finest campaigns in history — our last.”
“A lot of people said it’s one of the best campaigns ever run,” Trump said.
Trump invited Whatley on stage.
“I wanted him to be the guy, and I was right,” Trump said about Whatley’s role as RNC chairman. “I called it right. And I think he’ll be an even better senator.”
Trump promised to bring gas prices down as soon as the war in Iran ends.
The United States and Israel, under Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attacked Iran on Feb. 28, giving varying reasons, most often citing Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
“As soon as the war ends,” Trump said, “and it’ll end one way or the other very quickly, oil is going to drop like a rock.”
But Trump reiterated a message he gave just 34 days ago in North Carolina about the rise in gas prices: “This is a very small price to pay for keeping a nuclear weapon away from the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.”
Trump also promised he’d give each adult citizen $5,000, but only if Republicans win in the midterms.
Trump told the crowd that Cooper should not be allowed to be a senator, calling him “a fool.”
“He’s a super liberal fool,” Trump said. “I think a fool, because a senator who cares more about shielding murderers from a cough or a virus or something that will not, for the most part these killers were young, and instead of protecting innocent citizens from bloodthirsty killers — then Roy Cooper is the Dumocrat.”
Trump repeated the false-narrative that Cooper caused the death of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska at the hands of DeCarlos Brown, who had served a prison sentence.
Brown served his full prison sentence, but state officials included his name in a subsequent list of prisoners released as part of a settlement that allowed people near the end of their sentences to be released early to reduce the prison population during the COVID-19 pandemic.
State officials agreed to the settlement after a judge said he’d likely side with advocacy groups that sued Cooper for refusing to release half the prison population amid the pandemic. The judge said the conditions of the prisons had likely become unconstitutional because of the virus.
Trump also signed into law the CARES Act passed by Congress that allowed the release of more than 13,000 federal prisoners into home confinement during the pandemic.
Trump never brought up the CARES Act during Tuesday’s speech but said “it’s crazy” Cooper could become senator after abiding by the court settlement.
Moments after Trump took the stage, multiple protesters were removed from the crowd.
Trump was telling the crowd at the time, “I don’t need this. I could have been home.”
Trump, wearing a white USA hat, said he didn’t know whether to wear a coat: “They don’t know if it’s cold or not cold.”
Trump stopped as he noticed the protesters being led out.
The crowd chanted, “USA,” and Trump called them “losers.”
“Look, these are paid protesters,” Trump said. ”You know that every once in a while somebody starts shouting one word, two words, and they get whisked right out. They go home to their mom, dad, and they get smacked around.”
The crowd booed at the protesters.
Trump also pointed out a group of women from North Carolina who follow him from rally to rally.
Trump landed at Pitt-Greenville Airport after doing a flyover of the crowd.
Trump’s motorcade could be seen pulling up behind the stage.
It appears around 2,000 people have gathered at the venue to hear Trump speak.
He’s expected to take the stage shortly.
Whatley took the stage around 6:20 p.m. and spent the majority of his speech focused on his opponent.
“Roy Cooper, simply put, was the worst governor in the history of North Carolina,” Whatley said.
Whatley’s attacks focused on Cooper’s handling of COVID-19 and disaster recovery and Cooper’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice.
He also attacked Cooper’s mental acuity, something Cooper’s lawyers said is inaccurate and defamatory in a cease-and-desist letter to a reporter for the North State Journal.
Whatley also said Cooper will do whatever top Democrats tell him to do.
“We don’t need a senator whose first vote will be for (current Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer as the Senate majority leader, whose first vote will be for an agenda,” Whatley said. “There’s a reason that Chuck Schumer, (former President) Barack Obama, and the national Democrats are funneling hundreds of millions of dollars here in North Carolina, because they know that Roy Cooper will do exactly what they tell him to do, and he will vote for them and not for you every single time.”
Republicans have focused in campaign commercials against Cooper on a 2021 court settlement that allowed the release of 3,500 prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic, after a judge found the state’s prison conditions were likely unconstitutional because of the deadly virus.
Had North Carolina’s officials not agreed to the settlement, the judge could have sided with the plaintiffs and released 18,000 prisoners — half the population.
In August 2025, DeCarlos Brown, whose name appears on the list of released prisoners, killed a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, Iryna Zarutska. And despite the prison officials repeatedly explaining that Brown had already served his full sentence before the settlement was complete, Republicans from Whatley to Trump have blamed Cooper for Zarutska’s death.
“Iryna Zarutska should be alive today,” Whatley said. “And her blood is on Roy Cooper’s hands.”
Whatley also told the crowd he is likely to be the 51st Republican senator, giving them a majority, which was met with cheering. Polling is showing Whatley trailing Cooper by double digits.
It was after that statement that Whatley introduced himself to the crowd.
“I grew up in Blowing Rock, up on the Blue Ridge Parkway — a tiny little town of 534 people,” Whatley said. “When I grew up there, we had 534 people. We had one stoplight, and we had a Hardee’s. Today, they’ve got three stoplights and an Outback. It’s pretty explosive growth.”
Blowing Rock is a resort town with a population that fluctuates seasonally between about 1,400 and 6,000 people, according to a city tourism website.
Whatley went on to say his father was a certified public accountant and his mother was the town librarian. He said he went to church and that he got his first full-time job at 14, working his way through high school, college and grad school.
Whatley turned his attention back to politics and said if Democrats are elected, expect impeachment votes.
Whatley promised he would fight for farmers, the military and law enforcement.
“I am going to fight for our great state, and I am going to fight for the greatest nation in the history of the world, the United States of America, and my promise to you, North Carolina, is every single day,” Whatley said, “I will fight for you”
A supporter screamed, “I love you Ted,” as Sen. Ted Budd, a Republican from Advance, took the stage.
Budd reminded the crowd that it was in Pitt County five years ago that Trump endorsed Budd to be the next senator for North Carolina over former Gov. Pat McCrory and former Rep. Mark Walker.
That endorsement led Budd to the Republican nomination and into the U.S. Senate.
Budd told the crowd that Vice President JD Vance came to Hendersonville Monday evening to announce more than $800 million in Helene relief for Western North Carolina.
“That’s just one more example of what’s in stake this November for our state in this country that we love,” Budd said.
Budd said supporting Republicans is supporting abundant energy, strong borders and military, gun rights and the freedom to worship.
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The other option, he said, is to skip voting, or “worse, you can vote for Democrats.”
“Then you get open borders, all the work that these great folks have done over the last two years, all that down the tubes,” Budd said. ”You can support more reckless spending, higher taxes. Maybe they’ll take tax off your tips again. No, tax your overtime, tax your Social Security.”
Both initiatives expire after Trump leaves office after 2028.
Budd said that Whatley “loves our country, and he loves North Carolina.”
State Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, who is running to succeed U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards in the far southwestern counties, took the stage and introduced herself as a farm girl from the mountains.
She said she worked with Trump to “save women’s sports.” She told the crowd about a bill she sponsored that is now law, the Farmland and Military Protection Act, saying it ”keeps foreign adversaries like China from buying our farmland here in the state of North Carolina.”
Balkcom attacked her opponent, Jamie Ager, for holding barn dances on his farm, while she said on her own farm they “actually have crops, hay, tools, and of course tractors in our barns.”
After Balkcom, Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, took the stage.
“I gotta tell you, the Democrats are simply dangerous, radical, and frankly, they’re weird,” Scott said.
He told the crowd to elect Whatley.
“We’ve got to make sure President Trump has his support,” Scott said.
Trump is running behind schedule. The White House press pool confirmed that Air Force One has left Joint Base Andrews near Washington in route to Greenville, with Trump taking the smaller of the presidential planes.
1st district candidate Laurie Buckhout spoke on stage about her childhood on a farm, her service in the military and working for Trump leading cyber policy at the Department of Defense.
“I’m also a wife and a mom,” Buckhout said. “My husband’s a retired Army Delta operator, and we have raised two Eagle Scout sons. I want my boys and every kid in this district to have the America that we grew up with. Where hard work pays off, where the border means something, and you don’t have to leave home to build a future. That America is worth fighting for, and that fight is now.”
Buckhout also spent time attacking her Democratic opponent, calling the incumbent, “Do-nothing Don Davis.”
In the audience are voters like Maggie Lynn Heron-Heidel, who moved to Tarboro six months ago from Connecticut.
She’s an author who writes dystopian books.
“There are a lot of people who insist Trump is out of a dystopian novel, so I figured this fit,” she said.
Heron-Heidel hasn’t solidified her view on Trump and his policies yet. She said she came to the rally to hear Trump’s message “from the horse’s mouth.”
She’s told The News & Observer that she’s concerned about rising costs, especially groceries. She said that she knows that many residents of Tarboro, which has a poverty rate of 18%, are struggling with surging prices.
She’s also concerned about local farmers, especially after North Carolina faced “exceptional drought” this summer.
Court of Appeals candidate Craig Collins spoke before Buckhout and told the crowd he’s running “because I believe that we’re under attack from every direction.”
“We’re under attack out in our community by those who wish to commit violent crime against our friends, families, and neighbors,” Collins said. “We need to elect judges who are not afraid to stand up to repeat violent criminals, and I want to be clear: I will always stand on the side of the rule of law, accountability, and just and never with crime lawlessness and disorder.”
North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons kicked off the rally by telling the audience to vote Republican up and down the ballot, reiterating the message Trump posted on social media earlier in the afternoon.
Simmons said it’s especially important to vote Republican for judicial candidates. “They’re the ones that make sure we have safe streets and lock up those criminals,” Simmons said.
He added, “Make sure to go vote, but don’t go alone.”
Before Simmons spoke, a clip played on a screen over the stage of a segment from Fox News about ongoing protests and riots in Paris about education improvements and living costs. The segment quoted Vice President JD Vance, who said on X that “Western liberals imported the third-world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion.”
“President Trump is the first person to step forward on the global stage and identify this problem and do something about it,” one of the reporters in the clip said. “They say nothing about the fact that many of these protesters are immigrants from other countries that were hauled into the country, never assimilated.”
As the midterm rally started, Sen. Ted Budd, a Republican from Advance, stood near the stage.
Glenn Mancher, a Merry Hill resident originally from Brooklyn, New York, drove an hour to attend Tuesday night’s rally. He said that he came to the rally because it may be the last time he gets a chance to see Trump speak live since he has two years of his term left in office.
Mancher, who wore a “Trump 2028” hat, said that he knows that Trump is term-limited, but wore his hat to anger liberals.
He wasn’t sure about whether Republicans will be victorious in this election.
“I think the Democrats have the odds because it’s a midterm election and the party that’s not in power tends to win about 90% of the time,” he said.
Mancher said that he has more faith that U.S. Senate Republicans can maintain their majority. As for North Carolina’s GOP . Senate candidate, Michael Whatley, Mancher said he doesn’t know much about him.
Despite his support for Trump, Whatley’s close ties to Trump don’t factor into his vote, Mancher said. Instead, he said he’s voting with the party.
As he looks toward the election, Mancher said that his biggest priority is ending the Iran war.
”I’d like Trump to finish off the Iranians as quickly as possible,” Mancher said. “That would bring down energy prices.”
Andrew Bates, a former spokesman for President Joe Biden and an adviser to Cooper, told McClatchy exclusively that Tuesday’s rally is a “visceral reminder of Michael Whatley’s support for the Iran War that’s making gas and diesel prices skyrocket.”
“That’s on top of the unprecedented cuts to health care Whatley wanted, which are hurting people all over Eastern North Carolina just so billionaires like Elon Musk can pay lower taxes,” Bates said.
He called Tuesday’s rally “just about the worst message you could take to the Old North State right now.”
Gates County Commissioner Dave Forsythe, who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate, said Whatley isn’t doing enough to connect with voters. Forsyth is worried about the election outcome.
The likelihood of Republican success in the Senate race is “not good,” he said. Though Forsythe said Whatley is the right candidate for Senate, he said that he’s been too soft-spoken when trying to get his message out to voters.
“He’s not getting his message out because the Democrats are winning in the messaging arena with … print media and everything else by convincing people that ‘Oh, it’s all about Trump,’” Forsythe said.
Forsythe said that in 2024, he placed 150 Trump signs around his county. This year, he requested Whatley yard signs months ago, and he just received them on Saturday morning. He put them up across five counties this weekend.
“If you don’t even have signs to give out, then you’re not doing everything that you need to be doing,” he said. “I just think he needs to be more brash. Trump’s known to be brash.”
A pre-show program has started at Pitt-Greenville Airport.
A fire marshal said the capacity of the venue is 5,000 people.
About 400 people have made it to their seats.
Brenda Harper, a retired social services worker,has lived in Goldsboro for 31 years. Harper told The News & Observer that though she’s happy with what Trump has done so far, “we still have a little ways to go.”
“I think you just need to go back and see what he’s actually done,” Harper said as she waited in line. “I know things are expensive right now, but there’s other things that factor … where’s the oil coming from, (Trump is) putting tariffs on things … I think people just need to focus on what he’s done so far and what he’ll continue to do.”
Harper, who is represented in Congress by Rep. Don Davis, said she hasn’t seen him out with constituents enough. She is confident that people will realize how much Buckhout can help the district and vote for her, she said.
Ahead of Trump’s rally, he posted on social media encouragement for North Carolinians to go out and vote.
“Early Voting, in-person, is UNDERWAY NOW in the Great State of North Carolina,” Trump wrote. “If you have a mail-in ballot, return it immediately, and, if not, GO VOTE at the Polls RIGHT NOW, and get everyone you know to VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICAN IN EVERY RACE, UP AND DOWN THE BALLOT!”
“Whether you VOTE early, absentee, by mail, or in-person, Republicans must SWAMP the Radical Left Dumocrats with massive turnout,” Trump posted. “In North Carolina, you can cast your early Vote, in-person, all the way through October 31st. SO IMPORTANT — PLEASE GET OUT AND VOTE. MAGA! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Whatley is a rare Republican candidate who hasn’t tried to distance himself from Trump as the election closes in and Trump’s job approval rating faces record lows.
Whatley, a former energy lobbyist, served as Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s chief of staff and worked in Republican politics before Trump encouraged North Carolina Republicans to choose Whatley as their chairman.
Whatley led both the North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee as chairman during two of Trump’s three candidacies. Trump won North Carolina in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
But a recent poll by Elon University showed that a connection to Trump could be a turn-off for likely voters in North Carolina.
Forty-three percent of registered voters said Trump’s endorsement would make it less likely they would vote for a candidate, compared with 25% who said the president’s endorsement would make it more likely to vote for a candidate.
In Elon University’s poll, released this week, Cooper maintained his lead, this time by 13 points.
Trump’s visit comes one day after Vance stumped for Republican candidates in Hendersonville, in North Carolina’s similarly competitive 11th Congressional District.
This story was originally published October 20, 2026 at 5:10 PM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified a fire marshal’s statement on venue capacity. The fire marshal said the capacity at the airport venue is 5,000 people.
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