Former President Donald Trump will take the stage in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday to rally voters in the battleground state ahead of the November election.
This is 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, having 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 health care 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 Convention 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.”
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.
At the Aero Center in Wilmington, doors open at 3 p.m., and Trump is set to give remarks at 7 p.m.
Honor Flight of the Cape Fear Area is hosting its 2024 Veterans parade at the Wilmington International Airport at about 9:30 p.m.
This could bring additional traffic to the area.