Trump praised Glenn Youngkin as a ‘fantastic guy’ at a last -minute phone rally on election eve in Va.

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Former President Donald Trump made a brief cameo Monday night in Glenn Youngkin’s campaign for governor of Virginia, telling voters that the Republican is an “amazing man” who will “do a job without can be done. “

The comments did not come during a long and winding speech at a rally like Trump usually holds to promote himself and other GOP candidates but, instead, in an 11-minute phone call.

Youngkin, who did not campaign with Trump in a state won by President Joe Biden by a wide margin in 2020, will face Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the former commonwealth governor seeking a return to work, in Tuesday’s election. The former private equity executive did not participate in the call on Monday, which was billed as a “tele-rally.” But Trump spoke as if he and Youngkin had been friends for a long time.

“I got to know him very well and our relationship was great,” Trump told the audience. “The fake news media wants to say something else, because they want our big, giant, good base like it never happened before, who didn’t vote as much as they wanted. We have a good relationship and he’s an amazing guy . “

McAuliffe and his Democratic allies have spent months tying Youngkin to Trump, and although they share policy views and some cultural issues, Youngkin keeps the former president at a cautious distance. Virginia’s race for governor – which typically takes place in the year after the presidential election – has always been closely monitored and viewed as a signal for next year’s midterm elections.

Trump teased last week a possible appearance in Virginia before the election, but settled for the virtual event. A spokesman did not respond to a question about how many dialed for the call.

After a brief introduction by Mercedes Schlapp, a Virginia resident who served at Trump’s White House as director of strategic communications, the former president spoke for nearly six minutes.

“Glenn Youngkin is a Republican candidate,” Trump said at one point. “And you still have a lot of great people running, but he’s your leader. He’s your big Republican leader in Virginia and they’ll listen to him, and they’ll respect him, and you’ll see things. It happened in Richmond that you didn’t. believe, especially about taxes and your children’s education. ”

At another point, Trump went back to a claim he repeatedly made in his defeated re-election: that Democrats want to “remove suburbs,” a phrase that reflects segregationist rhetoric.

“Terry McAuliffe, as you know, he accepted the far left’s plan to remove and he would literally remove the suburbs as you know them now,” Trump said. “I fought hard to help the suburbs and do very well at that thing, but they want to build and do things. … They want to ban single family home zoning and turn apartment towers into the beautiful residential neighborhoods. This is wrong. and it will change your suburbs forever. “

Trump also hit on “critical race theory,” a phrase picked up by Youngkin and other Republicans while protesting against the anti-white curriculum they see in public schools. Youngkin attacked McAuliffe for vetoing bills in his previous term as governor that would allow parents to opt out of their children in lessons involving books deemed to have explicit sexual content. . The book at the center of that debate was “Beloved,” Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the horrors of slavery.

“He really said,‘ I don’t think parents should tell schools what they should teach, ’” Trump said, slightly altering the response to the McAuliffe debate that Youngkin had beaten him up in recent weeks. of career closure. “Well, that means all of those school boards that are instilled and installed are listening to a lot of angry parents. And we don’t want that. We want there to be harmony and peace.”

McAuliffe, whose team counts several times Trump endorsed Youngkin in public comments, used Trump’s involvement in the final days of the campaign to bolster his main attack.

“Glenn Youngkin’s campaign will close today just like it started: with Donald Trump,” McAuliffe said in a statement Monday. . “

Henry J. Gomez is a national politics reporter for NBC News.

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