Trump refers to Black man from racially offensive 1988 campaign ad while
stumping in North Carolina
[September 18, 2026]
By COREY WILLIAMS
As President Donald Trump tries to convince voters that Democrats have
let crime run amok, he’s digging into the country’s political past to
reference one of the most controversial campaign advertisements that
relied heavily on racist tropes.
During a campaign stop Wednesday in Gastonia, North Carolina, to stump
for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Trump resurrected
a 1988 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign ad featuring Willie
Horton, a Black man convicted of rape and assault after his release
through a Massachusetts prison furlough program.
A grainy black-and-white prison photo of Horton was used in the ad
targeting then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was ahead of Bush
in the polls. On Wednesday, Trump evoked the Horton ad in an effort to
convince voters Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper, Whatley's opponent in
the Senate race, is soft on crime.
“Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy,” Trump said, before
comparing Dukakis's release of Horton to the pretrial release of a Black
man who faces a murder charge for last year's killing of a white
Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Same thing as this, same as, same exact thing,” the president told the
crowd in Gastonia.
It’s the second time Trump has invoked Willie Horton while campaigning
for his party. Last month during a speech in Las Vegas, Trump called the
Charlotte killing a “Willie Horton — modern day” tragedy.
“After the Willie Horton ad dropped, Bush established a lead in the
polls and never looked back,” said Andra Gillespie, political scientist
at Emory University outside Atlanta. “They showed the picture, and you
ascribed race onto it. It wasn’t sufficiently condemned as racism.”
A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, which organized the
Gastonia campaign rally, defended Trump's reference to Horton.
“Roy Cooper emptied prisons and released thousands of violent monsters
onto North Carolina streets,” RNC National Press Secretary Natalie
Baldassarre said in a statement to The Associated Press. “The results
had deadly consequences, and every Democrat who supports abolishing or
defunding the police, paroling criminals, and implementing lax bail
policies will have to answer for their dangerous records in November.”
Trump paints North Carolina as a ‘dangerous state’
Wednesday’s rally referenced the Aug. 22, 2025, killing of white
23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a commuter train in Charlotte.
Decarlos Brown Jr., who is Black, faces murder and other charges in
Zarutska’s stabbing, which was captured on video. Court records showed
that at the time of the attack, Brown had 14 prior cases in Mecklenburg
County, including serving five years for robbery with a dangerous
weapon. Doctors had diagnosed him with schizophrenia.
Republicans and other influential voices in Trump’s Make America Great
Again movement claimed the attack showed how Democratic elected leaders
in large cities across the U.S. failed to protect residents, while some
conservative commentators suggested Democrats were ignoring an unfounded
“black-on-white” crime problem.
“He should have been locked up for many, many years,” Trump said
Wednesday of Brown.
“Nobody used to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state, criminally
dangerous,” Trump added while blaming Cooper. “It was apple pie, right?
Now, it’s one of the most violent, one of the worst in the whole
nation.”
According to 2024 FBI crime data, North Carolina ranked 19th for
statewide violent-crime rates in a 50-state comparison.
During the Gastonia rally, a mosaic of mug shots was displayed on a
large screen for the crowd. Trump claimed Cooper had cut a deal with
“radical activists” to release “some of the worst criminals in the
nation into North Carolina.”
“He released these people. This is just a small group of them,” the
president said, pointing to the mug shots that overwhelmingly featured
Black people.
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A image is seen on a screen as President Donald Trump speaks during
a rally at Gastonia Municipal Airport, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026, in
Gastonia, N.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Although it is unclear under what circumstances the people in the
mug shots were released, state corrections officials have said Brown
was not released early from prison or under Cooper’s COVID-era
prisoner-release settlement that Trump referenced.
Before fatally stabbing Zarutska, according to court records, Brown
had been on a pretrial release over a misdemeanor offense that was
ordered by a magistrate after Cooper left office.
‘Tapping into anger’
Republicans are under pressure to win over swayable voters as the
November midterms approach with Democrats pushing to gain control of
the House, the Senate, or both. Some political strategists say part
of the ploy of adding Horton to the North Carolina Senate campaign
is to rile up Trump's base.
“He’s tapping into the anger to remind Republican voters of what he
thinks their first principles are in hopes that will be successful
for Republican candidates,” Gillespie said.
“He’s doing this to try and divert attention away from criticism of
how he’s governing at the moment,” she added. “Democrats want to
make the story of this election Trump’s low approval numbers, the
war in Iran, inflation, being preoccupied with things that don’t
make a whole lot of sense when there are really serious things going
on in the country.”
Dewey Clayton, professor emeritus of political science at the
University of Louisville, said Trump and other Republicans may be
thinking that what worked before in the 2016 and 2024 elections
presumably will work again in this year's midterms.
“It was very effective,” Clayton said. “You do not necessarily have
to look at it as racial, in and of itself, although (race) clearly
becomes a component. In 2026, talking about ads going back in the
1980s? I'm sure he had consultants that were basically saying this
is tried and true.”
The GOP may need the push in November, Gillespie warns. “I think the
motivation by going back to these old strategies is there is real
concern about Republican enthusiasm and you might see lower
Republican turnout,” she said.
Rhetoric attempts to divert voters' attention from rising costs
The tactic speaks to desperation by Trump and the Whatley campaign,
according to Morgan Jackson, a partner with Nexus Strategies in
Raleigh.
“Trump brings up Willie Horton to stoke racial division, something
he's used for the last 10 years,” said Jackson, who is chief
strategist for Cooper's campaign. “It is very clear from the
president's speech last night their only goal is to sow division and
hate and lies. Michael Whatley doubles down in support of that
effort.”
Jackson also said Trump and Whatley are trying to change the
election's message of “rising inflation and the cost of everything.”
“They want to use inflammatory rhetoric, hate speech and lies to sow
division in a chance to win an election,” he said. “By referencing
Willie Horton, they are showing their hand very clearly.”
The AP sent an email Thursday seeking comment from Whatley's Senate
campaign.
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Williams reported from Detroit. AP videojournalist Erik Verduzco in
Gastonia, North Carolina, contributed.
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