GREENSBORO, NC, May 25, (AP): To a room full of Republicans from across North Carolina on Friday, former president Donald Trump railed against the Biden administration and vowed to win in the state for a third time - all over a speaker phone call after his son Eric Trump dialed him on stage.
"I just want to thank all of the people of North Carolina. The support has been great and never wavered,” Donald Trump said, met by cheers from hundreds in the crowd.
The four-minute phone call kicked off keynote speeches from RNC co-chair Lara Trump and her husband, Eric Trump, at the North Carolina GOP Convention in Greensboro. The couple touted key changes to the national Republican Party under Lara Trump’s leadership and insisted on the necessity of getting Trump back in office.
"What we have going on in this country right now is not Republican versus Democrat or left versus right," Lara Trump, a Wilmington, North Carolina, native, said during the couple's almost 40-minute address. "It's good versus evil."
Lara and Eric Trump’s speech comes a year after Trump addressed North Carolina Republicans as a keynote speaker at the party’s 2023 convention - one of his first public appearances a few days after his first criminal indictment claiming he mishandled classified federal documents was handed down from a grand jury.
But a lot has changed at the state and national party since Trump’s June visit to the convention - including his daughter-in-law’s meteoric rise within the Republican National Committee.
Lara Trump became the RNC’s co-chair, the party’s top fundraising official, in March and serves as No. 2 to Michael Whatley, the new RNC chair and former chair of the North Carolina Republican Party who is expected to speak at the NCGOP Convention on Saturday. Both Whatley and Lara Trump came into their leadership positions looking to revitalize the party and ensure Trump’s victory in November.