Trump to campaign in Robeson County, his 8th visit to North Carolina
President Donald Trump will appear in Lumberton Saturday for a campaign swing through Robeson County, his eighth visit to North Carolina since accepting the Republican nomination in August.
The Republican nominee’s announcement comes one day after he pledged to support the Lumbee tribe’s push for full federal recognition. Democratic candidate Joe Biden also pledged his support earlier in October.
Trump will appear at the Robeson County Fairgrounds at 12:30 p.m., delivering remarks on “fighting for the forgotten men and women,” his campaign said Thursday. The president will appear in Ohio and Wisconsin later Saturday.
The Lumbee are North Carolina’s largest Native American tribe with offices in Pembroke and its population centered around Robeson, Scotland and Hoke counties.
Unlike the Cherokee, the state’s only recognized tribe, they have no homeland in trust or the ability to govern themselves as a sovereign nation. Recognition, sought for more than 100 years, would also give the Lumbee access to federal health care and education dollars.
While Biden lent his support to a House bill from U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield that has yet to clear the full chamber, Trump got behind a similar bill in the Senate — Senate Bill 1368, or the Lumbee Recognition Act.
Tribal leaders could not be reached after Wednesday’s announcement from the Trump campaign, but earlier this month, Lumbee Tribal Chairman Harvey Godwin Jr. said the recognition would have a significant impact for its members, both in the services that could be provided but also the sense of pride recognition would bring, The News & Observer reported.
But Cherokee leaders in Western North Carolina have accused politicians of pandering to the Lumbee for votes.
“The pandering has reached new levels with the embrace of legislation to extend federal recognition to the Lumbee in North Carolina,” Principal Chief Richard Sneed said in a news release.
“The Lumbee have failed to attain federal acknowledgment as a tribe for over a century for good reason—they fail to meet the standards for federal recognition at every level. Despite false claims of association with four different tribes over the years, they have no language, no provable connection with any historic tribe and have opposed measures to genealogically verify Native ancestry of the group of people they call “members.”
“Yet,” he continued, “they’ve continued to cloak themselves in tribal identities that don’t belong to them, including Cherokee.”
Sneed spoke in opposition of the House bill in December before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States, The Smoky Mountain News reported.
Godwin spoke in support of it at the same committee.
Trump briefly mentioned his support for the Lumbee tribe Wednesday during a campaign rally at the Gastonia airport in Gaston County.
North Carolina is considered a swing state in the presidential election, and Robeson is one of the state’s “pivot” counties. Voters previously picked Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections but flipped to Trump in 2016.
Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, campaigned in Rowland, another Robeson County town, Oct. 10. Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, stopped in Lumberton in September as part of a Women for Trump tour.
Doors open at the Robeson County Fairgrounds in Lumberton at 9:30 a.m. Admission information can be found at Trump’s campaign website.
This story was originally published October 22, 2020 at 4:18 PM.