President Trump, at an unusual midterm convention in Texas in recent days, delivered an extended version of the messaging typical of his campaign rallies. Between exaggerated and false claims about his own accomplishments and his predecessor’s failings, the president also squeezed in fresh attacks on Democratic candidates in some of the most competitive Senate races this year.
Here’s a fact-check.
What Mr. Trump Said
“His sister celebrated the terrorist slaughter of babies on October 7th. She thought it was a great thing. His sister thought it was a great day.” — in his keynote speech on Wednesday night
False. Mr. Trump was referring to the half sister of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. But he mischaracterized what Mr. El-Sayed’s half sister, Eman Abdelhadi, said about the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.
Ms. Abdelhadi, a professor at the University of Chicago, posted two videos on Instagram on Oct. 7, 2024. She did not celebrate the attack or say “it was a great thing.”
Here’s what she said:
“My name is Eman Abdelhadi. I’m a Palestinian Egyptian organizer and scholar and writer. I want to say Allahu Akbar. That phrase means God is greater, and it’s an important phrase in the Muslim tradition. It’s one that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last year, because it’s a phrase that reminds us that no matter how great the brutality, the oppression, the intensity of what we’re going through, a horizon of justice is just around the corner. There is something greater than even the strongest armies, and for me, that’s God. And reflecting on that reaffirms my commitment to justice. My commitment not to get caught up in the narratives that colonial powers enforce on us, the narrative that might equals right, the narrative that we should just give up and accept an unjust status quo. God is greater, and we are greater than this moment. We will get past this. I hope that all of you take a moment to grieve the siblings that we have lost over the past year, to acknowledge that you are a different person than you were a year ago, and to mourn that version of yourself that’s now gone, but I hope you see yourself now as stronger, as more ready to fight for justice, or as more in solidarity with the oppressed. I hope you know that we have a lot of work ahead of us, and that we need each other to do that work. We have an imperative to not just imagine a better future, but to build one together. I’ll see you on the streets.”
The El-Sayed campaign said in a statement, “Abdul loves his sister and also disagrees with her on a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this or Mr. Trump’s other statements.
What Mr. Trump Said
“Roy Cooper was the governor and released this animal into North Carolina society.” — in his keynote speech on Wednesday night
False. Mr. Trump was referring to DeCarlos Brown Jr., the man who was charged with murdering a Ukrainian refugee on a train last summer in Charlotte, N.C. Mr. Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Carolina running for Senate, did not directly release him from prison or jail.
Mr. Brown was arrested in August 2014 and pleaded guilty to robbery with a dangerous weapon. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a minimum of six years and one month in prison, though he received credit for 176 days already spent in jail. He was not released early and left prison on Sept. 20, 2020, with a standard one year of post-release supervision, records show.
Mr. Brown was arrested again in January 2025 for misusing the 911 emergency system — typically, a misdemeanor offense — and a magistrate judge in Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is, released him without bail, on his promise to appear in court. (Mr. Brown’s mother told The New York Times last year that she believed he should not have been released.)
Republicans have tried to tie Mr. Cooper to Mr. Brown by citing a 2020 task force report the governor commissioned. Mr. Cooper established the advisory task force in June 2020 to implement “solutions that will eliminate disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system for communities of color.” The task force released its report and recommendations in December 2020, after Mr. Brown had completed his prison sentence and been released.
One of the recommendations was to eliminate cash bail for most misdemeanor charges unless the arrested person posed a danger to other people. While it is possible that the report influenced the judge’s decision to release Mr. Brown without bail after his 2025 arrest, there is no evidence that it did. Moreover, the recommendations do not mandate a change in state bail law, nor did Mr. Cooper personally direct Mr. Brown’s release from jail. The Charlotte Observer has reported that state law gives magistrate judges broad discretion to set bail conditions, and other counties still mandate set bail amounts for misdemeanor charges. For example, a neighboring county set bail for a woman accused of misusing 911 at $1,000.
The Cooper campaign noted that the task force’s recommendations were not binding and that Mr. Cooper actually supported a stricter pretrial bail policy, signing a law in 2023 that created stricter rules around bail for violent crimes.
Separately, Republicans have also cited a 2020 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina and other civil rights groups over prison conditions in the state during the pandemic. The lawsuit sought to compel the state to reduce the inmate population to better adhere to social distancing guidelines, and the groups and North Carolina reached a settlement in February 2021 — again, months after Mr. Brown had been released from prison.
What Mr. Trump Said
“He was also somebody that hated eating meat, but he ran a campaign to beat meat. He called it beat meat. I don’t know what the hell he meant by that. These people are going to tell me, ‘What the hell is he, he wants to beat meat.’ But it was bad for his image, so he started eating meat. And he recently — it’s getting worse. I’m getting myself in trouble. It’s getting worse. But he was recently seen having a barbecue and eating a lot of meat. But that’s what happened. He ate it and then he was seen running backstage to a room and throwing up all over the place.”
This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump repeated a false claim many Republicans have made about James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, and added a few embellishments. Mr. Talarico has repeatedly denied being a vegetarian or vegan, and has eaten meat on camera. There is also no proof that he began a campaign to “beat meat” or vomited after eating meat.
In a 2022 fund-raiser with a group that promotes the humane treatment of animals, Mr. Talarico said that his campaign was “nonmeat” and only bought vegan products from local businesses. Republicans have seized on those comments to characterize Mr. Talarico himself as vegan or vegetarian.
J.T. Ennis, a spokesman for the Talarico campaign, also denied that Mr. Talarico is a vegan. His campaign has circulated images and video of him eating a turkey leg at the Texas State Fair in October 2025 and eating chicken and steak at a festival in San Antonio in April. There are also photographs of Mr. Talarico with barbecue in 2019, chocolate cake in 2022 and funnel cake in 2018 — desserts that typically use dairy and eggs.
There is no evidence that Mr. Talarico threw up after eating meat on those occasions.
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