When you're running for public office, the stakes are high, and oftentimes, how one responds and when one responds to acts of violence and national tragedies can set a candidate apart from the rest of the pack as the leader perhaps most worthy of the support of the voters whom they want to represent.
Despite his near-40-year career in elected office, former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) is not the person who will meet the moment, will never be that person, something that has undeniably been proven true amid the ongoing national backlash over the murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte's light rail system.
Though the senseless attack happened on August 22nd, the release of the video last Friday, showing her final moments, prompted the corporate media to finally weigh in, albeit with a predictable "GOP pounces and seizes" narrative. NC Democrats who played a role in enabling the repeat offender who has been hit with federal murder charges begrudgingly issued statements, making matters worse.
But it wasn't until Tuesday that Cooper, the likely Democrat nominee for Senate, put out a statement of his own.
Here's what he wrote:
The murder of Iryna Zarutska is a horrible tragedy and we must do everything we can to keep people safe.
Only a cynical DC insider would think it's acceptable to use her death for political points, especially one who supported cutting funding to law enforcement in NC.
I've been Attorney General and Governor, dedicating my career to putting violent criminals behind bars and keeping them there.
It’s time Michael Whatley and the GOP get serious in Washington about funding our law enforcement, and that’s what I’ll do as Senator.
As we've written about extensively here, however, an alleged lack of police resources was obviously not the problem, since 34-year-old homeless man Decarlos Brown Jr. has been arrested 14 times and has mental health issues to the extent that his own mother felt like he should have remained behind bars.
The problem was things like Cooper's "Task Force for Racial Equity and Criminal Justice," something he put in place in the early days of the 2020 George Floyd riots. Among other things, this group advocated for bail reform, decriminalizing homelessness, and the expansion of pre-trial release programs. Cooper is on video, eagerly bragging about implementing their "solutions."
In 2020, my Democrat opponent, Roy Cooper, tasked a group of extreme leftists with advising him on implementing his executive order, which introduced weak-on-crime policies to North Carolina's justice system regarding “pretrial release, fees, and fines.”
— Michael Whatley (@ChairmanWhatley) September 8, 2025
He told the task force,… pic.twitter.com/QetgtHVB8s
READ MORE: Michael Whatley Drops Receipts on Roy Cooper As Fatal Stabbing Becomes Focal Point in NC Senate Race
After Cooper finally took the time to put out a belated statement, prominent GOP leaders like Vice President JD Vance and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) let him have it.
"Law enforcement arrested this thug 14 times. It wasn’t law enforcement that failed. It was weak politicians like you who kept letting him out of prison," Vance wrote on X.
Cotton responded by saying, "Roy Cooper now thinks it's 'cynical' to point out his policies kept Iryna's killer on the streets, free to commit murder. What a shameless fraud."
Yours truly also had a little something to say, not just to Cooper but also to his "vapid rapid response director" Jordan Monaghan:
You absolute snake. You used George Floyd's death to score political points AND to put soft-on-crime policies in place here in NC that ENABLED Iryna Zarutska's murder. You wait two & a half wks to respond to it with THIS? The voters of NC deserve better than you. #ncpol #ncsen https://t.co/Ty9w2HuRPM
— Sister Toldjah 💙 (@sistertoldjah) September 10, 2025
Roy's "rapid response" director excitedly announces his BELATED statement on Iryna's murder some two and a half weeks later. So much for the "rapid" part. This is an EPIC fail from Cooper and his comms team. #ncpol #ncsen https://t.co/5LMU7WR3rb
— Sister Toldjah 💙 (@sistertoldjah) September 10, 2025
Thanks in part to a dutifully compliant political press corps in the state capital, Cooper has never lost an election in this state. It is imperative for the future of North Carolina that the 2026 Senate race must be the one to break that streak.
Editor's Note: President Trump isn't going to allow lawlessness to reign in America. We will not have a repeat of 2020's "Summer of Love."
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