At NC rally, Trump speaks about slain student: ‘Not one more innocent American life should be lost to migrant crime’
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GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP/WNCN) — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday further escalated his immigration rhetoric and baselessly accused President Joe Biden of waging a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” as he campaigned ahead of Super Tuesday’s primaries.
RELATED: Georgia student’s murder emerges as touchstone in immigration and border battle
Trump has a long history of trying to turn attack lines back on his rivals in an attempt to diminish their impact. Biden has cast Trump as a threat to democracy, pointing to the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Those efforts culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as his supporters tried to halt the peaceful transition of power.
Trump, who has responded by calling Biden “the real threat to democracy” and alleged without proof that Biden is responsible for the indictments he faces, turned to Biden’s border policies on Saturday, charging that “every day Joe Biden is giving aid and comfort to foreign enemies of the United States.”
“Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” he went on to say in Greensboro. “Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”
Similar arguments have long been made by people who allege Democrats are promoting illegal immigration to weaken the power of white voters — part of a racist conspiracy, once confined to the far right, claiming there is an intentional push by the U.S. liberal establishment to systematically diminish the influence of white people.
“Once again Trump is projecting in an attempt to distract the American people from the fact he killed the fairest and toughest border security bill in decades because he believed it would help his campaign. Sad.,” Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
RELATED: Georgia student’s murder emerges as touchstone in immigration and border battle
Trump’s rally came three days before Super Tuesday, with elections in 16 states, including North Carolina and Virginia, where Trump held a rally Saturday evening. The primaries will be the largest day of voting of the year ahead of November’s general election, which is shaping up as a likely rematch of 2020 between Trump and Biden.
Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor, also campaigned in North Carolina on Saturday — about 80 miles away in Raleigh.
Haley is the last candidate standing in an increasingly arduous attempt to dethrone former President Trump from securing the Republican nomination.
“This is not an anti-Trump movement, this is a pro-America movement, where they are saying this is about the fact that somebody has to be talking about fiscal discipline, paying down the debt, making sure we get our economy back on track,” Haley said.
Speaking to reporters after her event in Raleigh the former U.N. ambassador demurred on her plans after Super Tuesday.
“We’re going to keep going and we’re going to keep pushing,” she said, arguing a majority of Americans don’t want either Biden or Trump as the nation’s leader.
Much of Trump’s speech in North Carolina focused on the slew of criminal charges he faces. While the former president has successfully harnessed his legal woes into a powerful rallying cry in the primaries, it is unclear how his message of grievance will resonate with the more moderate voters who will likely decide the general election.
“I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident and a public enemy of a rogue regime,” Trump said, railing against what he called an “anti-Democratic machine.”
At both rallies, Trump played a recording of “Justice for All,” the version of the Star-Spangled Banner that he collaborated on with a group of defendants jailed over their alleged roles in the January 2021 insurrection, whom he refers to as “hostages.”
As he focuses on the general election, Trump has painted an apocalyptic vision of the country under Biden, particularly on the topic of immigration, which was the animating issue of his 2016 campaign and which he has once again seized on as the U.S. has experienced a record influx of migrants at the border.
Trump and Biden both visited the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday to highlight their contrasting approaches to the issue.
On Saturday, Trump conjured images of Biden turning “public schools into migrant camps” and “the USA into a crime-ridden, disease-ridden dumping ground, which is what they’re doing.” He also spoke at length about the murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, now facing a murder charge, is a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case, which has thrust the slaying to the forefront of the U.S. debate over immigration, a top issue in the 2024 presidential campaign.
Studies have found native-born U.S. residents are more likely to have been arrested for violent crimes than people in the country illegally, but Trump has seized on several high-profile incidents, including a recent video of a group of migrants brawling with police in Times Square.
“Not one more innocent American life should be lost to migrant crime,” Trump said.
Hundreds of mourners lined up Friday at a church outside Atlanta to pay respects to the family of Riley, who was killed after she went out for a morning jog on the University of Georgia campus in Athens.
A funeral service for Riley followed a visitation in Cherokee County, where Riley lived before graduating from high school in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. A long line formed outside the visitation at Woodstock City Church, where a slideshow of photos played on TV screens inside the large church’s auditorium — Riley on a beach, at a football game, wearing a Bulldogs jersey.
In addition to speaking on various issues in Greensboro Saturday, Trump also acknowledged Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who was at the rally, and endorsed his ongoing gubernatorial campaign.
Trump called Robinson “an outstanding lieutenant governor.”
He referred to Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
State Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said the endorsement wasn’t a surprise. North Carolina doesn’t need a leader in Robinson who would “prioritize job-killing culture wars that take our state backward,” she added in a news release.
Statewide elections are usually close affairs in the nation’s ninth-largest state.
Sen. Ted Budd and Rep. Dan Bishop were also among the politicians Trump acknowledged in his speech; endorsing Bishop’s campaign for attorney general.
Rep. Virginia Foxx and Rep. Lauren Boebert also received praise from the former President.
Trump also endorsed Addison McDowell’s run for North Carolina’s 6th District.
Beyond their importance on Super Tuesday, North Carolina and Virginia are both states the Trump campaign is focused on for November.
Trump won North Carolina twice but watched his margin of victory shrink. Biden’s reelection campaign already has staff on the ground hoping to flip the state for the first time since 2008.
In North Carolina, a festive atmosphere surrounded the Greensboro Coliseum Complex ahead of Trump’s rally. Supporters stood in a line that snaked through a web of metal barricades and extended hundreds of yards from the arena. License plates from North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee filled the parking lot, where Trump flags flew alongside U.S. and Confederate flags on many vehicles.
“We just love Trump,” said, Mary Welborn, who lives in nearby Thomasville and expressed that she was frustrated by the criminal prosecutions and civil judgments against the former president. “The way he’s being treated is insane. No other president has been treated this way,” she said.
After the rally, several attendees praised Trump’s hard line on immigration.
“We look like fools around the world with the border just wide open,” said Samuel Welborn of Thomasville.
“My biggest concern is that my kids are not going to have the same country that I grew up in,” added his wife, Mary. “It’s just a different time.”
In Richmond, supporters started lining up Saturday morning for an evening rally at a downtown convention center. The entry lines stretched several blocks by mid-afternoon, and supporters booed as a vehicle with a Haley campaign ad circled the building.
David McDaniel of nearby Chester said the country had gone downhill since Trump left office and that he’d personally struggled.
McDaniel, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, said he had to shut down a construction business he owned due to rising costs for materials and gas.
“The fuel prices just ran us out,” said McDaniel, 32. “So we need Trump to get back in so we can open it back up.”
Associated Press writers Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, and Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
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