President Donald Trump used a Friday visit with special forces members at North Carolina‘s Fort Bragg to promote his hand-picked candidate for the state’s U.S. Senate seat up this fall.
Trump traveled to the military base to honor the special forces members who took part in January’s raid to capture former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Billed as a celebration of the military, including a closed-door visit with special forces operators, Trump did not shy away from midterm politics. The president even pulled former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, his endorsed candidate to succeed retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), onto the stage.
“You saw what happened in the last election,” Trump said. “We won everything, and this is a man that was in charge of this state. He did so well here, there was nobody else that I even considered to run the RNC.”
Whatley, who is set to square off against former Gov. Roy Cooper in the general election come November, called Trump “the best president.”
“I am thrilled that he has asked me to run for Senate in North Carolina and is giving me an opportunity to represent you and to fight for you and every other base that we have in this great state, to protect our interests, to make sure that America and our allies are going to be protected,” Whatley said.
The North Carolina Senate seat is considered one of the key toss-ups of 2026. Whatley was courted by Trump to jump into the race after Tillis, 65, opted against seeking a second term. A centrist Republican, Tillis has broken with Trump on national security and the Justice Department’s inquiry into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Underscoring the importance that veterans and military families played in helping Trump carry the state three times, Friday’s remarks focused heavily on military policies. Trump, in particular, noted his administration changed the name of the Defense Department back to the War Department, boosted federal spending for military families, bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, and conducted the Maduro operation in Venezuela.
Trump also leaned into the 2025 killing of Iryna Zarutska, a flashpoint issue for Republicans in North Carolina. Zarutska, an immigrant from Ukraine, was murdered on a Charlotte-area light rail train, allegedly by a man with a lengthy criminal record. Republicans pointed to a criminal justice reform bill signed into law by Cooper as being responsible for the killing.
Cooper “allowed this man to get out [of jail] and to do that,” the president declared. “That’s not going to happen with Michael Whatley, that I can tell you.”
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles previously told reporters that the president would take weekly trips in 2026 to sell his economic agenda and campaign for Republicans up and down the ticket.
However, Trump had deviated from that schedule by the first week of February. He stayed at the White House for five days straight last week before spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He returned to the White House on Monday, where he remained until departing Friday afternoon for Fort Bragg.
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Trump’s North Carolina remarks can be seen in full below.