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    • Trump rails against Iran and courts crucial voters in North Carolina: 3 insights
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    Trump rails against Iran and courts crucial voters in North Carolina: 3 insights

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

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    WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump hit the campaign trail Wednesday, addressing issues such as the threat posed by Iran to the economy and seeking votes in the crucial state of North Carolina as the race for the White House in 2024 enters its final stages.

    “This is a very important place, a very important state,” Trump said during a speech at Mint Hill near Charlotte.

    North Carolina has long been considered an important swing state, even though the state has supported the Republicans in every presidential election since 2008. Nevertheless, some believe that the Tar Heel State is suddenly in danger of receiving the Republican nomination because of the scandal surrounding gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.

    Trump did not mention Robinson, who is facing a fierce backlash over a CNN report that alleged he made shocking comments on a porn website. The former president has not withdrawn his support for Robinson, who insists he will stay in office in what is expected to be the closest gubernatorial race of the fall.

    Instead, the former president promoted his own economic plans and condemned those of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

    At the start of his 67-minute speech, Trump highlighted intelligence reports that Iran was targeting him. He also suggested that Tehran might be involved in the two most recent assassination attempts on his life – although authorities insist there is no evidence of Iranian involvement.

    “As you know, there have been two assassination attempts on me, as far as we know, and Iran may have been involved, or it may not have been involved,” Trump said.

    Here are USA TODAY’s key takeaways from Wednesday’s speech.

    Strongly denounce Iranian threats

    Trump said in North Carolina that the US government should warn Iranian politicians that their country and its cities would be bombed to “rubble” if any harm were to come to the presidential candidates.

    “If I were president, I would tell the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm that person, we will blow your greatest cities and the country itself to a thousand pieces,” Trump said. “We will blow it to a thousand pieces. You cannot do that, and there would be no further threats. … But right now, we don’t have that leadership.”

    Trump traveled to North Carolina a day after his campaign announced that intelligence officials had informed the former president of “specific death threats from Iran to destabilize the United States and create chaos.”

    American officials accused Iran of hacking Trump’s computers, but said there was no evidence linking the regime to the two assassination attempts on Trump..

    Speaking to a supportive crowd about Iran, Trump again mentioned the attempt on his life on July 13, when a bullet narrowly missed his head – hitting his ear and drawing blood. A week ago Sunday, he was arrested by authorities and charged with attempted murder after carrying a rifle onto Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.

    After the speech in North Carolina, the Trump team announced that he would return to Butler for a rally on October 5.

    US government officials and Trump associates have long suspected that Iran is seeking revenge on Trump for the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which took place during Trump’s tenure in the White House.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appearing on NBC this week, said: “This is something that we have been following very closely for a long time – a sustained threat from Iran against a number of senior officials, including former administration officials like President Trump and some individuals who currently serve in the administration. So it is something that we take very, very seriously.”

    Courting voters in North Carolina

    It was Trump’s second rally in North Carolina in four days after CNN reported that Robinson wrote the offensive online posts.

    The report was comprehensive. CNN accuses Robinson of frequently visiting a pornographic website between 2008 and 2012 and posting a series of comments that were sexually explicit, racist, transphobic or otherwise offensive.

    The newspaper also reported that Robinson called himself a “black Nazi” and supported slavery in the United States to some extent, and that he supported Nazi leader Adolf Hitler over the leadership of then-President Barack Obama.

    Robinson denied authoring these posts and did not attend any of the recent Trump rallies in his state.

    As he did at a rally on Saturday at an airport in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump called out prominent North Carolina Republicans but made no mention of Robinson, his party’s candidate for governor.

    The North Carolina gubernatorial election is one of the most important races that Republicans hope to win in November. However, recent polls have Democratic candidate and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein ahead of Robinson by as much as 10 percentage points.

    The Harris campaign – which is citing Trump’s repeated praise for Robinson in recent months – has stepped up its voter mobilization efforts in North Carolina since the CNN report emerged. Presidential polls show a neck-and-neck race in a state that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 and that he will likely need to win to have a chance of retaking the White House.

    Focus on the economy

    Trump made the economy a central theme of his speech on Wednesday, just as he did on Monday in Savannah, Georgia.

    The Republican candidate touted plans to cut taxes and corporate regulations, as well as efforts to encourage companies to bring jobs back to the U.S. from abroad. He also defended calls for higher tariffs on companies that move jobs out of America. Trump has made economic policy a focus of his campaign for weeks, though he again offered few details on Wednesday about how he plans to put those promises into action.

    Trump also attacked Harris over her own economic agenda, as well as inflation, illegal border crossings, Ukraine, the Middle East – and the impact of all of that on the state of North Carolina. He focused in particular on the furniture industry, which has long been a factor in the swing state’s economy, which has experienced major upheaval in recent decades.

    “This November,” he said, “the people of North Carolina will tell her enough is enough.”

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    Madoc Meredith
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