WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is asking North Carolina voters to elect Michael Whatley to the U.S. Senate, releasing an Oval Office video that gives the former Republican National Committee chairman his “complete and total endorsement.”
The clip, posted Friday on Trump’s Facebook and X accounts, casts the race as a crime fight against former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for the seat Sen. Thom Tillis is leaving.
Watch the endorsement:
“A very special hello to North Carolina,” Trump said. “This November I’m asking you to get out and knock on doors and volunteer and vote for Michael Whatley, a great guy, to be your next United States Senator from North Carolina.”
Trump said Whatley “has been with us from the very beginning” and tied Whatley’s tenure as North Carolina Republican Party chair to Trump’s three statewide wins in the state. “Michael Whatley will never, ever let you down,” he said.
Trump’s attack on Cooper
Trump labeled Cooper a “weak on crime” “radical liberal” and said promoting him to the Senate would be “a tremendous mistake.” In the video, Trump accused Cooper of supporting no-cash bail, vetoing a bill to ban sanctuary cities, and cutting a deal “to release 3,500 inmates from North Carolina prisons, including dozens of hardened criminals.”
Those figures and characterizations are Trump’s. Cooper’s campaign has not framed his history that way in this cycle, and Catawba First News has not independently audited the inmate-release numbers Trump recited.
Trump linked Cooper to the killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte train, saying Cooper “released that guy into our society” and that she was murdered “after Roy Cooper set that savage criminal loose.” Whatley made a similar charge in a Dallas GOP speech earlier this month, saying “her blood is on Roy Cooper’s hands” — a claim Catawba First News previously reported as Whatley’s framing, not an adjudicated finding.
“If promoted to the Senate, Roy Cooper will sell you out to the radical left once again and flood your communities with crime,” Trump said.
Whatley’s pitch, in Trump’s words
Trump said Whatley would vote for “strong borders, booming economy, and the greatest military anywhere in the world” and be “really strong on crime.” He closed by asking “every patriot in North Carolina” to vote for Whatley.
Whatley’s response
Whatley’s campaign answered with its own Facebook video thanking Trump for coming to Gastonia this week and casting the race in the same crime-and-conservatism frame.
“Thank you President Donald J. Trump for coming to Gastonia this week. North Carolina needs a conservative champion and fighter in the US Senate,” the Michael Whatley for Senate post said. “Unlike Roy Cooper, who was the worst Governor in the history of our great state, I will always put N.C. First!”
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1225357340671842/
The endorsement lands in a Senate race Democrats and Republicans both treat as a national priority. Catawba First News has covered Whatley’s Dallas midterm speech casting Cooper as a radical, and Cooper’s argument that Republicans enjoy a structural money edge after the RNC’s restored lowest-unit advertising discount — Whatley in Dallas, Cooper on GOP advantage, and Cooper’s pattern of overreach attacks.
Trump’s Friday video puts the White House’s preferred contrast on tape: Whatley as the MAGA-aligned crime candidate, Cooper as the soft-on-crime ex-governor. North Carolina voters will decide in November which frame sticks.
Video: President Donald J. Trump, Sept. 18, 2026 — https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/2101038915037601821 · https://www.facebook.com/DonaldJTrump/videos/1507841294482808/ · Whatley response: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1225357340671842/
