Former US President Donald Trump postponed a meeting in North Carolina on Saturday, his first major campaign event planned since the start of his criminal trial in New York, due to bad weather. Thousands of his supporters gathered at the Wilmington airport, in this state which will be bitterly contested by Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden on November 5, before the Republican candidate announced the postponement of the meeting.
“We want to make sure that everyone is safe first and foremost and so we have been asked to ask people to leave the premises and take shelter,” the former president said in a phone call broadcast on the site, according to AFP journalists.
Bad weather
“It seems like there is thunder and lightning (…) I think we are going to have to postpone this for another time,” added Donald Trump, promising to organize another, “bigger” rally at the same place. The man who hopes to make a triumphant return to the White House is on trial in a case of hidden payments to buy the silence of a former porn star, Stormy Daniels, a few days before the 2016 election which he won by the wire against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Denouncing a “witch hunt”, Donald Trump protested on several occasions against the fact that the trial did not give him free rein. “I should be right now in Pennsylvania and Florida, in many other states, in North Carolina, in Georgia, campaigning,” he said indignantly this week. Saturday morning, several hours before the scheduled meeting, his followers in Wilmington had already begun to gather, armed with coolers and hats under the scorching North Carolina sun.
For Stephen Prater, a 29-year-old trucker, it is obvious: the trial of his candidate is “largely due to the left which is trying to do everything to prevent him from becoming president again.” Grace Miller, 58, thinks the same thing. It’s a “political” trial, she assures.
“I did not do anything wrong !”
Donald Trump attacked again on Saturday the judge of his New York trial, historic because it is the first criminal trial of a former American president. The magistrate must be “dismissed”, he said. “I did not do anything wrong !” he stormed on his platform, Truth Social. “If immunity is not granted to a president, every president leaving office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party,” he said.
Although no Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina since Barack Obama in 2008, Joe Biden wants to believe in his chances in the state. Because even if Donald Trump won in North Carolina twice, in 2016 and in 2020, Joe Biden narrowly lost in this state to him during the last election. The Democrat is trying to take advantage of the cases that beset his rival, stuck in court several days of the week, and is plowing the field.
“Very busy”
He was in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., on Tuesday, contested and crucial to the November election. While he has long refrained from commenting on Donald Trump’s troubles, Joe Biden shot an arrow at him this week, saying that the latter was “very busy at the moment”. The White House assured that Joe Biden was not following the trial, adding: “he is focusing on the Americans.”
This trial coincides with Joe Biden’s advance in the polls since his State of the Union speech in March, with the two candidates now neck and neck. But Donald Trump and his supporters also hope to take advantage of the media attention surrounding his criminal trial, counting on the fact that it offers him a ready-made platform for campaigning.