Trump event in Wilmington canceled as severe weather reaches the region

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The campaign rally for former President Donald Trump in Wilmington has been canceled due to severe weather.

Trump was scheduled to take the stage at 7 p.m.

About 20 minutes before 7, he addressed the crowd through speaker phone that he had been advised to cancel the event due to an impending storm. Dark rain clouds filled the sky as rally goers went back to their cars.

“They’ve asked us to ask people to leave the site and seek shelter,” Trump said as the crowd groaned. “What we’ll do is we’ll make up for this very quickly at another time. ... We want to keep everybody safe.”

As the crowd clamored, Trump said there was “thunder and lightning and a great big storm.”

“So, if you don’t mind, if you could just do a rain check,” he said.

The National Weather Service in Wilmington issued a severe thunderstorm warning until about 7:15 p.m. Saturday night and a severe storm watch for the area until 10 p.m. The main threats were strong winds and hail.

As it blew through Charlotte a few hours earlier it produced 70 mph wind gusts and half-dollar-sized hail.

The Wilmington rally was supposed to be his first big campaign event since the start of his criminal trial in New York City on whether he falsified business records to cover up a payment to a porn star, marking the first-ever trial of a former American president.

He is also facing several other state and federal investigations, including into his business, his handling of classified documents and related to efforts to overturn and reverse the results of the 2020 election.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is no stranger to the Port City. He hosted a rally here in 2022 prior to the state’s mid-term elections to campaign for Sen. Ted Budd, then a candidate. He most recently hosted a rally in Greensboro just days before Super Tuesday.

His competitor for the White House has also been active.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Raleigh in late March, honing in on healthcare access and calling to reinstate Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that made abortion a constitutional right for decades. First lady Jill Biden visited Greensboro and Greenville on Monday.

The Democratic National Committee took Trump’s visit as an opportunity to attack the former president on abortion policy. DNC placed 16 English and Spanish billboards in Charlotte — where Trump is holding a fundraiser — and Wilmington.

The billboards read: “Abortion is banned in North Carolina thanks to Donald Trump. He won’t stop until it’s banned nationwide.”

“Donald Trump is responsible for the attacks on reproductive rights that we’re seeing in North Carolina and across the nation,” said Jackie Bush, DNC’s regional press secretary.

As Trump transitioned from celebrity to politician his views on abortion moved from one extreme to the other, and he often changes that policy position, making it hard to track what he would do if he were president. His latest position is that abortion laws should be left to the states.

“His anti-freedom agenda is already endangering the lives of women in North Carolina, but Trump and his cronies won’t stop until every woman across the country lives under an extreme national abortion ban,” Bush said. “That’s why women in North Carolina and across the country will reject Trump’s extreme bans at the ballot box this November and send President Joe Biden back to the White House.”

North Carolina Democrats also got together in Wilmington prior to the rally to touch on Trump’s work on getting Roe v. Wade overturned, and how they say it paved the way for the state’s abortion ban, which prohibits abortions after 12 weeks with exceptions.

Polls show Trump and Biden neck-and-neck in North Carolina. Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll said the race would be too close to call if the election were held today.

North Carolina is considered a swing state, but it has largely favored GOP presidential candidates, including in 2020, when Biden lost to Trump by just 1.5% of the vote. But while the state overall opted for Trump, the preference varies by county, with some swaths of the state being deeply red, while others, typically urban areas, run blue.

New Hanover, is a purple county, and was one of just three counties in North Carolina to flip between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The others were Nash and Scotland.

News & Observer reporter Kristen Johnson contributed to this story.