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Roy Cooper Has Bad News for Trump in North Carolina
The former North Carolina governor tells MeidasTouch that frustration over Trump’s cost-of-living failures, Iran war, and Washington corruption is reaching voters across party lines
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Listen to more interviews like this by following the MeidasTouch Podcast
Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper says he is seeing signs on the ground that Donald Trump’s political grip is weakening in one of the most closely watched battleground states in the country.
Cooper, who is running for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat, told MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas that voters he encounters across the state are increasingly frustrated with a Trump regime that promised to bring down costs but has instead left families struggling with higher bills.
“When the president and his administration promised that cost of living will be the day one focus, people are saying, hey, they haven’t done anything, and in fact, they’ve made it worse,” Cooper said.
Cooper pointed to rising utility, housing and grocery costs, while also taking aim at Trump’s war in Iran, which he said has added another financial burden on Americans after Trump campaigned against dragging the country into new foreign conflicts.
“This war has no strategy,” Cooper said, adding that military families he has spoken with are worried about loved ones deployed overseas. “The costs of this war, not only in lives, but in the cost of gas and groceries and utilities that people are facing,” are mounting, he said.
But Cooper said something else has stood out as he travels North Carolina: people who have never previously attended political events are suddenly showing up.
“There is hardly a political event that I have been to this entire campaign where someone hasn’t come up to me and said, this is the first political event I’ve ever been to in my life,” Cooper said.
He said those voters include Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated North Carolinians who are frustrated with Washington and looking for a way to push back.
“They’re there because they want to make a difference,” Cooper said. “They’re there because they believe that we should have the checks and balances that the framers of the Constitution intended.”
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Cooper also hammered the Trump regime over a government increasingly focused on wealthy interests rather than working families.
Voters, he said, “want people in power who will pay attention to them, and not the billionaires and corporations that we’re seeing time and time and time again from this administration.”
“And I think all of the corruption that is occurring throughout Washington, DC,” Cooper added. “They were going to drain the swamp. It’s deeper than ever.”
The stakes are particularly high in North Carolina, where Cooper is running against Republican Michael Whatley for a Senate seat that has remained in Republican hands since 2008.
“My opponent, Michael Whatley, will do and say whatever this president tells him to do and say, regardless of whether it’s good for the people of North Carolina,” Cooper said.
While acknowledging that Trump still maintains support in the state, Cooper argued that even some Trump voters may ultimately want a senator willing to challenge the president.
“I think that they are, at the end of the day, going to want an independent senator who is not afraid to stand up to him,” he said.
Republicans appear prepared to spend heavily to stop him.
Cooper said nearly $100 million in advertising had already been reserved against him by outside Republican groups, with additional spending expected from Trump-aligned organizations.
“We expect a lot more,” Cooper said. “We expect a lot from Donald Trump’s PAC.”
The former governor also unloaded on Whatley over his decision, while serving as chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, to appoint Harvey Lee West Jr. to a party position.
Cooper said West had been convicted of molesting children, served six years in prison and was on the sex offender registry when Whatley later appointed him to a position within the state party.
“Michael Whatley appointed him to an important position because the guy could raise money,” Cooper said, adding that Republicans within the state party objected to the decision at the time.
Cooper accused Whatley of hypocrisy for campaigning as tough on crime while having made that appointment.
“This is the kind of thing that we’re dealing with here, people who pretend to be tough on crime,” Cooper said. “Yet when it comes to politics, they want to protect people who are child predators.”
In his closing pitch, Cooper returned to the kitchen-table issues he believes could ultimately decide the race.
He described conversations with a Wake County teacher changing how she shops because of grocery prices, a mother worried about losing Medicaid coverage for her daughter with cerebral palsy, farmers squeezed by higher equipment and fuel costs, and families considering leaving the workforce because child care has become unaffordable.
Cooper framed the Senate election as something bigger than a traditional partisan contest.
“This race is going to get very close at the end. It always does in North Carolina. And a few votes can matter,” he said.
“It matters because we need a course correction for this country,” Cooper added. “We all need to look within ourselves as to what we can do to make sure we leave a better country to our children and grandchildren and future generations.”
Watch Ben’s interview with Roy Cooper above, and listen to more interviews on the MeidasTouch Podcast.
