Trump Revives Willie Horton Ad at North Carolina Rally for Whatley

President Donald Trump invoked one of the most racially charged political advertisements in modern American history during a campaign rally Wednesday in Gastonia, North Carolina, as he sought to bolster Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley.

Trump brought up Willie Horton, a Black man convicted of rape and assault who was released through a Massachusetts prison furlough program, in a 1988 ad that helped then-Vice President George H.W. Bush overcome Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. The spot featured a grainy black-and-white photo of Horton and was widely condemned for relying on racist tropes.

"Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy," Trump told the crowd, before drawing a parallel to the pretrial release of a Black man charged with murder in the killing of a white Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte last year. "Same thing as this, same as, same exact thing," he said.

The rally referenced the Aug. 22, 2025, stabbing death of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte commuter train. Decarlos Brown Jr. faces murder and other charges in the attack, which was captured on video. Court records showed Brown had 14 prior cases in Mecklenburg County, including a five-year sentence for robbery with a dangerous weapon, and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Trump said Brown "should have been locked up for many, many years" and blamed Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper, Whatley's opponent, for North Carolina's crime record. "Nobody used to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state, criminally dangerous," Trump said. "It was apple pie, right? Now, it's one of the most violent, one of the worst in the whole nation."

According to 2024 FBI crime data, North Carolina ranked 19th among states for violent-crime rates. During the rally, a mosaic of mug shots appeared on a large screen, which Trump said showed people Cooper had released. State corrections officials have said Brown was not released early from prison or under a COVID-era prisoner-release settlement Trump referenced. Brown had been on pretrial release over a misdemeanor offense ordered by a magistrate after Cooper left office.

The Republican National Committee, which organized the event, defended Trump's remarks. RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said in a statement that Cooper "emptied prisons and released thousands of violent monsters onto North Carolina streets" and that Democrats who support certain criminal justice policies "will have to answer for their dangerous records in November."

It was the second time Trump has invoked Horton on the campaign trail. Last month in Las Vegas, he called the Charlotte killing a "Willie Horton — modern day" tragedy.

Political analysts offered differing views on the strategy. Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University, noted that after the original Horton ad aired, Bush took a lead in the polls and never lost it. "They showed the picture, and you ascribed race onto it," she said. "It wasn't sufficiently condemned as racism." Gillespie suggested the tactic aims to energize Republican voters amid concerns about turnout.

Dewey Clayton, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Louisville, said Trump may be betting that a strategy that worked in 2016 and 2024 will succeed again. "It was very effective," Clayton said. "You do not necessarily have to look at it as racial, in and of itself, although race clearly becomes a component."

Morgan Jackson, chief strategist for Cooper's campaign, called the reference an attempt to "stoke racial division" and said Trump and Whatley are trying to shift attention from inflation and the cost of living. "They want to use inflammatory rhetoric, hate speech and lies to sow division in a chance to win an election," Jackson said.

The rally comes as Republicans face pressure to win over swing voters ahead of the November midterms, with Democrats aiming to capture the House, the Senate, or both. A request for comment from Whatley's Senate campaign was not immediately returned.