Donald Trump was in North Carolina to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley. Then he appeared to tie disaster relief money to the outcome of the election.
During a rally in Gastonia on Wednesday night, Trump said North Carolina was still waiting for additional federal money to help repair damage from Hurricane Helene.
“Michael was also an incredible champion for your state when you were hit with that terrible storm,” Trump said, referring to the 2024 hurricane that killed 107 people and damaged or destroyed over 125,000 homes across the state. “A lot of people call it…from the standpoint of water, the worst hurricane they’ve ever seen.”
He continued: “The Democrats didn’t do a damn thing. The Republican congresspeople came and we got to be friends really, fixing this place up, and we spent more than $2 billion dollars [on] FEMA funding. And you know, you’re waiting for some additional money to take care of the back, and I’m gonna get that to you Michael.”
Then he delivered the punchline.
“Now if Michael loses, I’m not sending it, ok?” Trump told the crowd, waving his hand.
“No, I’m only kidding,” Trump added.
The president has made his support for Whatley a central part of his North Carolina campaign strategy, telling supporters that he needed to return to the state to help “make sure he wins.”
The disaster-funding remark was only one of several moments during the roughly hour-long rally in which Trump connected federal policy and his political agenda to the upcoming midterms.
He again promised that every U.S. adult would receive a $5,000 payment if Republicans maintain control of Congress after the November elections.
“If we win, we’re going to get you $5,000,” Trump said.
The proposal has previously been described by Trump as a “dividend,” although questions remain about how such a payment would be funded and implemented.
Trump also spent much of the rally attacking Democrats and former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Whatley’s Democratic opponent.
At one point, he described North Carolina as having become “one of the most violent and one of the worst in the whole nation,” despite the state’s violent-crime rate being below the national rate in 2025, according to FBI data cited in recent reporting.
Trump also revisited the killing of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light-rail train in 2025, using the case as part of his broader argument that Democrats have been too soft on crime.
He portrayed Whatley as the candidate who would take a tougher approach.
“Sometimes I don’t like him, he’s too aggressive,” Trump said of Whatley. “He’s a real ball-breaker, let me tell you, but he’s great.”
The president also attacked Cooper over his record as governor and accused Democrats of being communists and supporting “open borders.”
The rally briefly went off script when a heckler was escorted from the venue.
But the most unusual moment may have come when Trump appeared to connect federal disaster assistance to the fate of the Republican candidate — and then, almost immediately, insisted he was only joking.
For North Carolina voters still waiting for money to rebuild after one of the state’s worst natural disasters, it was a remarkably specific joke.
