Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller Goes Off on the GOP's Trainwreck NC Senate Candidate

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

Tim Miller is back with another installment in his continuing series on the Republican candidates running in key races across the country. This time it’s Michael Whatley, Trump’s handpicked Senate candidate in North Carolina, whose record includes appointing a convicted child sex offender to a state GOP committee, hard-line abortion politics, financial interests tied to policies he supports, and questions about his role in Hurricane Helene recovery. Plus, Tim digs into the ugly story behind an anti-Roy Cooper ad featuring a grieving father who says he was misled about how his story would be used.Explore more in this series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXT8ySfDKu0

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from The Bullwork. We are back with another in our series of the insane and stupid Republicans that are running statewide all across the country. I think that we saw another flare up of it this week, the mainstream media, I believe. So one CNN segment. Those eight minutes entirely dedicated to what Hassan Piker said on his stream and what that means for Abdul. It's just like, these Republicans who are out there who are, actually running for office are the craziest. They have crazy positions. They are corrupt. They're scandal plagued. They've said as insane things as any random leftist Twitch streamer. And so we're going to feature them all. So you can send them to your friends in that state.

We've already done Andy Biggs in Arizona. Mike Collins in Georgia. Stacey Garrity in Pennsylvania, Zach Lane, the investor in the medical device company. And also Roger. Marshall in Kansas, who we are focused on, in particular, his work promoting debtor's prison for women that could not pay the entire bill for their C-section or hysterectomy. So it is quite the Motley crew, and today we're turning to North Carolina to talk about

their U.S. Senate nominee, Michael Watley. We'll pull him on screen here. He might just look like a regular boring white chud Republican, and that is basically what he is. But he is a chud who has been an complicit accomplice and all of the most insane things that Donald Trump has wanted to do. And he also has some side corruption in his personal life, like all the other Trumpers. So before I run down the parade of Horbles that is Michael Watley's track record, I do want to say, we're going to North Carolina, where he's running for Senate against Roy Cooper. And that is happening in October. You can get your tickets to borg.com slash events.

if you live there, if you're looking for a little fall getaway, Charlotte's beautiful this time of year. We're also going to Columbia, South Carolina on October 16th. We're going to have the trio there. My buddy Piccari Sellers is coming. Tickets are almost sold out for Columbia. So if you want to come out in Columbia, get that ticket right now. I should have mentioned the good secretary Pete will be with us in Charlotte. So that's going to be a lot of fun.

And I think Sarah's going to interview and we'll see if she gets nervous. So it's going to be good. All right. Michael Wightly, let's go through the rap sheet. He was the former chair of the North Carolina Republican Party and then became the chair. of the Republican National Committee in 2023. So that's right. This is a guy who looked at the insurrection,

watched people storm the Capitol, waving Donald Trump flags, attack police officers, and said, after that, he was like, you know, I want to be the guy that's the standard bear for this party.

I want to be the person that is the representative for the institutional cop beating, anti-democracy, insurrectionist, authoritarian, Donald Trump cult party. That's what he signed up for. So just by taking that job, I think, tells you really all you need to know about Michael Watley. But Republicans are, you know, and he's the former chair, so they're going to do their

best to try to get him across the line. But it's not just that he's just generic mega-Republican. He also participates in a lot of the same types of stuff that these guys do. Like, I don't know, covering up for pedophiles. We can add another one to the list. Fing, put another one up on the board as chairman of the North Carolina GOP, Michael Watley appointed a convicted child sex predator who served six years in prison and over a decade as registered sex offender to the North Carolina Republican Party's plan of organization

committee. This predator, Harvey West, has publicly admitted that Watley appointed him and said he was open with NCGOP leadership about his criminal pass from day one. Whatley still hasn't given an explanation. So a convicted child sex predator, Michael Watley looked at him and it was like, you know what, I think this guy should be helping us organize the party. We need to let's find this guy a committee slot. He's out of the clink.

And, you know, what could the risk be? I don't know. You know, there'll be children volunteering at the headquarters and stuff. But let's have this guy in the corner office. Who knows what he'll be doing? Republican Party Organization Committee. That's where Michael Wally wanted to put a child sex predator. He also, on top of that, so it wasn't just that he, like, decided to be party chair after January 6th.

He fully supported their pardons. Let's quote this article here from American Journal News. He stood by Trump's January 6 pardons despite sex crimes charges. And we've been covering this on here. A lot of the pardoned January 6ers weren't just treasonous. You know, they weren't just in jail for storming the Capitol. they also had other crimes that they committed before and after. And one of these guys was even in North Carolina.

We have David Daniel, who was charged with producing sexually explicit material featuring a minor under the age of 12. Daniel argued that Trump's pardon applied to this offense as well. A judge disagreed. But that's the type of people that Michael Watley was like, yeah, let these guys out of prison. We got to go in prison, Fauci or James Comey for putting some seashells up. We're going to make sure that the child sex pests that storm the Capitol get a pardon. That's Michael Wattley. Michael Wattley is down the hard line when it comes to abortion.

He called abortion infanticides. He's probably to be the most pro-life chair in the history of the Republican Party. he was extremely happy with the overturned of Roe under his leadership his chair the North Carolina party out to the platform with a plank that would ban abortion with no exceptions so

you know it's like even if you are pro-life a lot of pro-life people in North Carolina that I have there should be some limits on abortion the idea that like you would force a woman to carry her rapist baby or maybe combining the other stories. Like, let's say that the pardoned sex pest that Michael Watley wanted to put on a board or a committee at the North Carolina GOP,

let's say that he raped an underage girl. Then in North Carolina, if Michael Watley was in charge, that girl would be forced to carry her rapist baby. So that's the policy that Michael Watley wants to put in place. think that's going to be very popular in North Carolina. On data centers, Michael Wadley said, well, why don't we just play the clip of Michael Wattley talking about data centers? I know families are worried about the data centers. They've been doing things. Every time we do something on the data center, I get emails from every side of it. So this is one of more intriguing issues as opposed to the knee-jerk issues of common sense. Well, it is. But you also got to remember

that this opposition to data centers is not organic. This is being ginned up, the same way that we saw opposition to energy projects around the country. They're trying to build a new nuclear plant. All of a sudden, people come out of the woodwork and they hate nuclear. No subsidies, tax breaks, but no subsidies. I think that makes a lot of sense. So we're going to give like the richest people in the history of the world tax breaks in order to build data centers in North Carolina. That's what, that's Michael Watley's possession. He wants to give Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Sam Altman tax breaks. That's what they need.

They need a little assistance to make sure they can afford it. And what are the people in North Carolina getting? They're getting a data center in their community that, you know, depending on what kind of data center it is, can be very intrusive, loud, can be bad for the environment. It's just like, okay, this opposition is not organic. I think the opposition of data centers is very organic. We've not seen this level of,

of sentiment shift on a policy issue in this short period of time in a long time. And it's because people are expressing their authentic views that they don't like it. They don't like what it represents. And they don't like what the big tech guys are doing in their communities. So, you know, I don't, that's kind of like when these guys always say that the protesters, the no king's protesters are paid protesters. Like, who's getting paid? Who's getting paid?

Nobody, nobody's getting paid to say to the pollster that they oppose the data centers. They just aren't happy with them. We should also mention the data center issue ties to Watley's extensive corruption. He's a long-time lobbyist. People love lobbyists. He's personally benefited from a lot of policies that have negatively impacted North Carolinians, including right here on the data centers. He has $1.6 million in investments related to data centers.

including Duke Energy. So obviously this is something that would benefit him personally. He's also one of the few people making cash off of the Iran War. It's costing everybody else money, but it's doing good for Michael Watley because he's seen the value of his investments soar almost a quarter million dollars, particularly again in Duke Energy, as a result of the increased price of oil.

oil gas after the Iran war. He has supported a bunch of policies that increased prescription drug prices while has a bunch of big pharma stock holdings. And I like this one. He wants to privatize flood insurance. The other big issue in North Carolina recently was the fallout from Hurricane Helene and just kind of the disaster response generally that's been impacting the state. Michael Watley was named the Hurricane Helene Recovery Tsar by Donald Trump.

I think that Donald Trump thought that would help him, you know, to be kind of given something that he could point to that he helped with in the state. But, you know, that would have, you know, presumed that they would have done a good job or actually cared or actually tried very hard to help people in the state. Locals are not really impressed with Watley's efforts as the recoveries are. They've been saying they haven't seen him do anything. More than 20 people for around Black Mountain area, organizer news conference to talk about Watley recently.

They say for months, they haven't seen him attend local meetings or do any kind of outreach to see what people need, particularly around controversies like delayed funds. It's been a big problem there. People not getting, you know, the recovery funds that they have applied for. Trump, on the other end, thinks that they've been doing great. He's not at all moved by the plight of the people that suffered from these storms and say that they're not getting the support for the federal government that they had been promised at a rally this week that Trump did for Whatley, which city doesn't really like him that much as a person.

That was an interesting side point. Trump said this about the recovery effort. And we spent more than $2 billion in FEMA for funding and, you know, you're waiting for some additional money to take care of some of the back and I'm going to get that to you, Michael. Now, if Michael loses, I'm not sending it. Okay. Yeah, people love that. People love it when you joke about, you know, how you're not going to give them their insurance money because you're unhappy with the results of an election.

That's, I think that's really going to land well for Michael while the recoveries are. It's like, hey, guys, I'm holding you hostage. You have to vote for me if you want to get the money back to fix. your roof. Otherwise, Trump's not going to give it to you because he's a petty bitch. I think that's an interesting message. We'll see how it works out for them. Things are going bad for Wightly in the polls. Shouldn't be surprised after hearing this about him. And so Republicans are trying anything they can to try to sully Roy Cooper is running one of the best campaigns in the country this midterm. Let's take a look at what they've done in the ad space. I don't know. We think that Roy Cooper's been governor of North Carolina.

Maybe there are some policy issues that you could criticize him for and argue that Michael Watley would do better on would be one idea for ads. It's not what the Republicans are doing. They're trying to get Cooper for being soft on crime. One of their first ads on this attacked Roy for a crime committed in South Carolina. This was committed by a criminal. from South Carolina who never faced charges in North Carolina. And the governor of North Carolina has a lot of power. But I do not think that he has any remit over crimes committed in South Carolina.

That's a completely different state. That's run by Republicans incidentally. And so they took another swing. And I guess what they've tried to do this time is they tricked a guy that was a victim, whose family was a victim of crime, into talking for an ad. The guy's name is Ronald Hayes. He was told that he was doing an interview for an independent group doing an anti-gun violence ad. His son had been killed.

He lost his son to gun violence. And instead, the ad turned out not to be an anti-gun violence ad, but an anti-Roy Cooper ad. Ronald Hayes supports Roy Cooper in the Senate race. and I got to tell you this one this is this one is enough to boil your blood and this is a sick one and you're really going to

trick a father like who lost their kid like it's just the most unimaginable worst thing that could ever happen to as to have a kid get gunned down and to lose your kid before they had a chance to live a full life

for a kid to go before you and to take somebody that had to deal with that and lie to them and manipulate them and use them to try to help this chud michael wottley get elected to the senate is about one of the most disgusting things you can do in a campaign and michael wadley it's all on board for it yeah and they could tell him to take down the ad he could tell them to stop doing this um he knows that they manipulated this guy to try to help him it's sick stuff from a sick candidate good news he's getting his ass clift right now but you got to run through the tape got to run through the tape we're going to

going to be in North Carolina. That will be talking about this race and all the other craziness that's happening. And so hope to see a lot of you guys there. Again, go to thebork.com slash events. If you want to see us there or next Friday, we have our live benefit event in Dayton, Ohio, supporting the Springfield community and the Haitians. It's been unbelievable the response we've had to that. It's going to be an amazing crowd. And so if the spirit moves you, come hang out with us next Friday in Dayton or next month in Charlotte. Appreciate you all. We'll see you soon. We'll be back. Bye.