What Donald Trump Has Said About North Carolina, Sourced

North Carolina

A battleground Donald Trump fought hard to win. This is what he told its people after Hurricane Helene, what his signature bill does to their health care, and what happened to the one senator who would not go along. Sourced, and mostly from North Carolina Republicans.

What he told you after the storm

What he told your neighbors while they were still digging out

It's all gone. They've spent it on illegal migrants.

In Rutherfordton, N.C., surveying Helene damage · October 2024

It was false. Congress had appropriated more than $35 billion in disaster relief, and the program that shelters migrants is funded separately. FEMA had to pause operations in the area after relief workers faced armed threats fueled by the very rumors he was spreading. The Republican congressman for the region, Chuck Edwards, had already published a fact sheet debunking the claim, "FEMA has NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border," and was standing behind Trump as he repeated it anyway.

Sources: Rep. Edwards (R) debunks the FEMA rumors (Fox News) · Trump repeats it with Edwards behind him (AP via PBS)

What Washington is doing to your health care

The coverage your junior senator wants to end

They aren't who the program was originally intended to help.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), on ending North Carolina's Medicaid expansion · 2025

Trump's "big, beautiful bill" cuts Medicaid deeply; the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the Senate version would leave 11.8 million more people uninsured by 2034. In North Carolina, roughly 600,000 people gained coverage through the state's recent Medicaid expansion, and that funding keeps many rural hospitals open. Budd voted for the bill and defended cutting the coverage, saying it would lower government spending.

Sources: WRAL

And the senator who wouldn't vote for it

Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise… the greatest form of hypocrisy in American politics.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), on the Senate floor · June 2025

Tillis said the Medicaid cuts would be "devastating to North Carolina" and broke Trump's own pledge not to touch the program, and he voted no. Within a day, Trump announced he would recruit a primary challenger against him. Rather than fight, Tillis announced he would not seek reelection, warning that leaders "willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species."

Sources: Tillis on the floor (AP via AOL) · Trump's primary threat, and the CBO estimate (ABC11)