Donald Trump postpones rally due to weather, underscoring the challenge of balancing legal issues with presidential campaign

Due to a storm that passed through North Carolina on Saturday night, Donald Trump was forced to postpone his first scheduled rally since the beginning of his criminal hush money trial. This new development underscores the challenge the former president faces in balancing his legal issues with his rematch with President Joe Biden.

Less than an hour before he was supposed to take the stage, Trump called into the rally site near the Wilmington airport and apologised to the few thousand fans who had gathered during the afternoon under originally beautiful skies but subsequently became stormy.

Speaking aboard his own jet, Trump justified his decision to avoid landing by mentioning lightning and the approaching storm. He promised that a “bigger and better” event will be rescheduled “as quick as possible” at the same site.

The scheduled rally in North Carolina, a crucial battleground, was supposed to be the culmination of a week in which Biden was allowed to do several campaign rallies in Pennsylvania, another crucial state in the November election, while Trump was forced to spend four days in a Manhattan courthouse, mute for jury selection.

The cancellation cost Trump another opportunity to fuel his conspiracy theory that his several pending charges are part of an elite plot to remove him from office and suppress the people who supported him when he was first elected eight years ago.

Now, instead of commanding attention on his own terms at one of his signature mass rallies, his next public appearance is almost certainly going to be Monday, back at the defendant’s table for opening arguments in the first felony trial ever for an American president. And his campaign is left to decide when he next can be Trump the candidate instead of Trump the defendant.

“I’m devastated that this could happen but we want to keep everybody safe,” Trump said.

The assembled voters expressed frustrations with the turn of events but made clear they understood. Many of them had spent hours ahead of the rally holding prime seats, patronizing food trucks and perusing a row of tents selling Trump memorabilia, including T-shirts featuring the former president’s mug shot taken in Atlanta after his indictment on charges that he led a criminal conspiracy to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.

“I’ve been with Donald Trump and I’m still with Donald Trump, but I’m disappointed he didn’t show up,” said Cheryl Lynn Johnson, who drove about two hours from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to attend what would have been her fourth Trump rally. “I’m mad at Mother Nature, but I stand behind Trump.”

Indeed, the audience was primed to validate Trump’s strategy to use his mandated court time to his advantage by folding the proceedings into the same populist, anti-establishment arguments that first fueled his rise eight years ago.

“It’s political persecution, and if it were anybody else he wouldn’t have to be dealing with it,” said Christian Armstrong, a 28-year-old firefighter who lives in Wilmington and was attending his first Trump rally.

LeeAnn Coleman, a 42-year-old who is in a family restaurant business, said, “It’s ludicrous that he’s having to do this at all,” rather than spend time focusing on “all the problems he wants to fix.”

Those arguments could have come from Trump himself.

“They want to keep me off the campaign trail,” the candidate-turned-defendant insisted earlier this week in Harlem, where he visited a neighborhood convenience store and addressed a throng of media outside after spending the day at his own jury selection. Rather than pursue violent criminals, he alleged, “They go after Trump.”

It is not clear when Trump’s next campaign appearance will be. His New York trial could last more than a month, severely curtailing his freedom to see voters, fundraise and make calls, and additional court proceedings could follow later in the year. Trump aides have promised weekend rallies and events on Wednesdays, the one weekday that Trump’s hush money trial is expected to be in recess. The former president’s campaign also has promised additional weeknight appearances around New York, like his trip to Harlem.

But there is no accounting for weather. The closest Trump came to assigning responsibility for the cancellation was to mention “weather officials,” but he did not question the decision during his brief remarks.

Even with the cancellation, Trump’s choice of venue underscored the importance of North Carolina as a presidential battleground. Trump won here by less than 1.5 percentage points over Biden in 2020, the closest margin of any state Trump won. Saturday would have been the second time in as many months that Trump visited the state. Biden has traveled to North Carolina twice this year; Vice President Kamala Harris has been four times.

“The presidential race is going to run through North Carolina,” said Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, in a recent interview.

North Carolina is one of seven states that both the Trump and Biden campaigns have said they will dedicate significant campaign resources to winning. Trump has insisted he will widen the map, even into his native New York, which is heavily Democratic. Most Republicans, though, agree that Trump will have a difficult path to an Electoral College majority if Biden were to win North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes. Trump tacitly acknowledged North Carolina’s status by tapping then-state Republican Chairman Michael Whatley to lead his effective takeover of the Republican National Committee.

Biden’s campaign has hired statewide North Carolina leadership and field organizers for offices across the state. That’s on top of state party staff that began an organizing program last year ahead of municipal races and looking to this year’s statewide contests, which include an open governor’s race. Cooper is legally barred from seeking a third term.

“We needed to build energy on the ground early,” said state Democratic Chairwoman Anderson Clayton, noting that the last Democratic presidential nominee to win North Carolina — Barack Obama in 2008 — had organized the state in a hotly contested primary campaign that ramped up the previous year.

Matt Mercer, spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, countered that Republicans have had veteran staffers on the ground since 2020, and now have a ticket with Trump and Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, that excites the GOP base. Trump has endorsed Robinson, the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Robinson was set to be on stage with Trump in Wilmington.

Ahead of the scheduled rally, Democrats hammered the pairing for their opposition to abortion rights, calling them too extreme for North Carolina.

Cooper predicted Biden’s record — low unemployment, rising wages, stabilized inflation, infrastructure and green energy investments — and his support for abortion rights will resonate with a geographically and demographically diverse state.

“Joe Biden did more in his first two years than most presidents hope to do in two terms,” Cooper argued.

Mercer said Republicans will answer with a family-first message around the economy and public safety.

“Whether it’s with sky-high inflation, the open southern border or the migrant crime crisis,” he said, voters are “fed up” with Biden.

Trump lost an opportunity Saturday to make that case himself. But for voters like Matt Mazak, a 32-year-old who described himself as an independent, the verdict already is in.

“I want someone who is not going to go with the flow of D.C.,” Mazak said. “I’m not even saying Trump is the right answer. But he’s the best we’ve got.”