"A pure lie."
Suddenly, North Carolina's outgoing governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, had had enough. On X, he launched a fierce attack on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's claims that disaster relief to those affected by Hurricane Helene was being withheld.
"Trump's lies and conspiracy theories are damaging the morale of rescue workers and thus the people who have lost everything," Cooper wrote, adding that the state authorities were working around the clock.
Withheld?
Hurricane Helene swept through southeastern USA at the end of September, causing enormous destruction and flooding. Nearly 100 people died in western North Carolina alone.
Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump made false accusations that Democrats in power were withholding relief resources. He linked the events to his pet issue of immigration and claimed that relief funds were instead going to migrants who had entered the USA illegally.
The claims have been debunked as lies by both the head of the disaster agency FEMA and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But they seem to be causing confusion among voters in the crucial swing state, where Trump is currently considered to have a one-point lead.
Cut and Paste
Add to that the headlines about the Republican vice governor Mark Robinson, who is campaigning to succeed Roy Cooper. This after news channel CNN reported that Robinson had called himself a "black Nazi" and written that he was in favor of reintroducing slavery on a porn site forum ten years ago.
The revelation has led many party colleagues to distance themselves from Robinson and delete posts supporting him. Donald Trump, who previously backed the gubernatorial candidate, has campaigned in the crucial state without mentioning his name.
Both Trump and Harris seem to have a direct line to North Carolina, whose 16 electoral votes are crucial for winning the presidential election. Voters here have identified immigration, the economy, and preserving democracy as the most important election issues in opinion polls.
The southern state has voted Republican for decades, with the exception of 2008 when the inhabitants helped send Barack Obama to the White House. But increased immigration to the high-tech research triangle near Raleigh and Durham is changing the demographics. The last elections have seen a margin of victory of less than two percentage points, according to NPR.
Corrected: An earlier version of the text contained a misleading formulation about CNN's investigation. It concerns Robinson, not Cooper.
North Carolina is located in the middle of the USA's east coast, has 10.8 million inhabitants, and is one of the original 13 states. Charlotte is its largest city and the capital Raleigh the second largest.
70 percent of the inhabitants identify as white and 22 percent as black. Just over 11 percent are Spanish-speaking Hispanics, a group that can also identify as ethnically black or white, according to statistics from the Census.
The state's inhabitants have long been called "tar heels", roughly translated as tar heels. This refers to the production of tar in the large forestry industry already in the 1700s. Today, the nickname is mainly used for students and sports teams at the University of North Carolina.
In 1903, the North Carolina-born brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright became the first people to operate a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft.
North Carolina produces the most tobacco products of all USA states.
Over the past 50 years, a majority of North Carolina-born residents have voted for the Republican candidate in the presidential election, with the exception of 1976, when they supported Jimmy Carter, and 2008 when Barack Obama won here. In 2024, the state is considered one of the seven crucial swing states.
