President Donald Trump has referenced a politically charged case from the 1980s during his campaign on crime ahead of the midterm elections. At a rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Trump repeatedly mentioned Willie Horton, a Black man convicted of murder. Horton’s case became central to a political attack during the 1988 presidential election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, then the governor of Massachusetts. Horton was serving a life sentence when he was released under a weekend furlough program but failed to return. While on the run, he assaulted a man and raped a woman. A political action committee backing Bush used Horton’s mug shot in an advertisement criticizing Dukakis for the furlough program. The ad became one of the most controversial moments of the campaign, with critics arguing it exploited racial fears about Black criminality. More than three decades later, Trump referenced Horton while criticizing former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, the Democrat running against Whatley. "Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy," Trump said. He compared Horton’s case with that of Decarlos Brown Jr., a Black man charged with murdering a Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, on a Charlotte commuter train in August 2025. "Same thing as this, same as, same exact thing," Trump said. This was the second time in recent weeks that Trump had referenced Horton. During a speech in Las Vegas last month, he described Zarutska’s killing as a "Willie Horton — modern day" tragedy. Political scientist Andra Gillespie from Emory University noted that the original Horton ad had proven politically effective for Bush but was widely criticized for its racial imagery. "After the Willie Horton ad dropped, Bush established a lead in the polls and never looked back," Gillespie said. "They showed the picture, and you ascribed race onto it. It wasn't sufficiently condemned as racism." Trump used Wednesday’s rally to portray Cooper as soft on crime, gesturing toward a screen displaying mug shots that overwhelmingly featured Black people. He claimed Cooper had released "some of the worst criminals in the nation into North Carolina" and blamed the former governor for Brown being free before Zarutska’s killing. However, state corrections officials stated that Brown was not released early from prison or under the COVID-era prisoner-release settlement Trump referenced. Brown had been released before Zarutska’s killing in connection with a misdemeanor case, with a magistrate ordering the release after Cooper left office. Trump also described North Carolina as "one of the most violent, one of the worst in the whole nation." FBI data for 2024 ranked the state 19th among the 50 states for its violent-crime rate. The Republican National Committee defended Trump’s remarks, saying Cooper "emptied prisons and released thousands of violent monsters onto North Carolina streets." Cooper’s campaign strategist accused Trump of using the Willie Horton reference to "stoke racial division" and distract voters from issues like inflation and the cost of living. The renewed focus on crime comes as Republicans and Democrats compete for control of Congress in November, with North Carolina’s Senate contest being one of the key races that could determine which party controls the chamber.