Former President Donald Trump holds his first campaign rally since surviving a assassination attemptback in the key state of Michigan alongside his new running mate.
“That was exactly a week ago, to the hour, to the minute,” Trump told the crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, referring to the July 13 shooting in Pennsylvania that left him with a bloody ear, killed a supporter in the crowd and wounded two others.
“I stand before you only by the grace of Almighty God,” he said, the white gauze over his ear replaced by a flesh-colored bandage. “I shouldn’t be here right now,” he continued.
Trump was joined by Senator JD Vance of Ohio at the couple’s first event together since becoming the GOP presidential nominees Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“I find it hard to believe that a week ago an assassin tried to take Donald Trump’s life, and now we have a huge crowd in Michigan to welcome him back on the campaign trail,” Vance said before Trump’s arrival.
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Michigan is one of the few Crucial key states The outcome of November’s presidential election is likely to be determined by the outcome of the campaign. Trump narrowly won the state by just over 10,000 votes in 2016, but Democratic President Biden reversed course in 2020, winning by a margin of 154,000 votes before taking the presidency.
After appearing unusually calm and emotional at the Republican convention, Trump returned to his usual rallying mode, lashing out at his Democratic rivals, repeating his lies about the 2020 election and peppering his speech with jokes that drew laughter from an enthusiastic audience.
At one point, Trump looked at a screen showing him at an unusual angle and joked about his hair.
“That’s some bullshit. What’s up with that one?” he said. “I apologize. God! I looked up and said, ‘Wow!’ That’s like a work of art!”
At another point, as he invited a supporter on stage, he joked: “He doesn’t carry any guns!”
But Trump also spoke about the shooting, pretending to have turned his head to look at a map of southern border crossings projected on a giant screen and narrowly avoided the bullet that hit his ear.
“I owe my life to immigration,” he said. “It’s true.”
Hours before his performance, Trump supporters filled the streets of downtown Grand Rapids in anticipation of the former president’s remarks. Supporters began lining up Friday morning, and by Saturday afternoon, the line stretched nearly a mile from the entrance to the 12,000-person Van Andel Arena.
Many people in the packed arena were seen wearing Trump T-shirts, on stage after he was shot, raising their fists in the air after surviving the shooting, as well as the usual red “Make America Great Again” hats.
Mike Gaydos, who traveled from Indiana with his three sons to attend the rally, said he didn’t consider himself a “big” Trump supporter in the past but wanted to show his support for the former president after his assassination attempt.
“We can’t afford to go through something like this,” he said. “I think he showed courage that day and I want to show my sons what courage is as well.”
Security tightened after assassination attempt
Many streets, closed as an extra security measure, were dotted with food and clothing vendors. Among them was a vendor from North Carolina who said he had spent the night making shirts that read “Trump Vance ’24.”
Downtown Grand Rapids also saw a heavy police presence, with officers stationed on nearly every block, while others patrolled on horseback and bicycles. The heightened security outside the venue created a tense atmosphere, with some attendees saying the drones overhead made them nervous. The event was held indoors, a change from last week in Pennsylvania, where the shooter fired from a rooftop outside the security perimeter.
Attendees had to pass through a metal detector as they entered the indoor arena in downtown Grand Rapids, but the security presence inside appeared consistent with previous events.
“This is the tightest security I’ve ever seen,” said Renee White, who said she has attended 33 Trump rallies. “We can usually bring a few small bags, but today I had to leave some stuff there.”
White sat behind the podium at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop. She described the shooting as “surreal,” but said it wouldn’t stop her from attending rallies.
“If I’m going to be retired, at least I’m doing something I love to do, right?” White said.
Republicans See Opportunity in Michigan
Trump’s choice of Vance was seen as an attempt to win support from Rust Belt voters in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio that helped Trump secure his surprise victory in 2016. Vance specifically mentioned those places during his acceptance speech at the convention, noting his roots in poverty in small-town Ohio and pledging not to forget the workers whose “jobs were sent overseas and children to war.”
Democrats dominated Michigan in recent elections, but Republicans now see an opening in the state as Democrats are increasingly divided over whether Biden should drop out of the race. Biden has insisted he is not giving up and has tried to shift the focus back to Trump, saying Friday that Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention presented a “bleak vision of the future.”
Trump speaks out on controversy surrounding Biden’s re-election bid
At Saturday’s rally, Trump polled the crowd on who they would like to see as an opponent, with cheers for Biden and loud boos when Trump asked about Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump and his team tried to push through Democrats’ efforts to replace Mr. Biden as a “coup,” in what appears to be part of a broader effort to try to distract from Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election after he refused to accept the results and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
“Right now, the Democratic Party leadership is desperately trying to overturn the results of their own party’s primaries to remove corrupt Joe Biden,” he said. “As you can see, the Democratic Party is not the party of democracy. They are actually the enemies of democracy.”
Trump later pushed back against attempts to portray him as an extremist, even as he promised mass deportations and threatened retaliation against his political enemies.
“They keep saying, ‘This is a threat to democracy…’ Last week, I took a bullet for democracy,” he said to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.
Trump also tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a political and personal plan for a second Trump term developed by a host of former Trump administration officials.
Trump called the plan, which has become a centerpiece of Biden’s campaign against Trump, “very right-wing” and “seriously extreme,” just like the “radical left.”
“I don’t know,” he insisted.
The 81-year-old Democratic congressman, who ran in Detroit this month, is currently in isolation at his beach house in Delaware recovering from COVID-19.
Grand Rapids, the largest city in Kent County, was historically a Republican stronghold but is increasingly shifting blue. It was one of three Michigan counties that Trump won in 2016, but Biden flipped in 2020. It’s also an area where former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley picked up a substantial number of votes as she ran against Trump in the GOP primary, a group of voters that both presidential campaigns are now hoping to win back. Haley urged her supporters to back Trump in a speech at the convention.
Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Democrat representing Grand Rapids, is among a growing number of lawmakers calling on Mr. Biden to withdraw from the race after his disastrous debate performance last month.
