Crowds gather in Grand Rapids for Trump’s first rally since the shooting

Large rapids — Former President Donald Trump is expected to take the stage at Van Andel Arena Saturday night for his first rally with vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and his first rally since a gunman tried to end his life in Pennsylvania.

When the doors opened around 1 p.m., long lines of people were waiting to get to the entrance of Van Andel Arena, eager to get a seat in the arena for the first post-convention meeting of the Republican National Committee in Milwaukee.

Angie Bakus of Tecumseh had been waiting in line since 9 a.m. for what she estimates is her eighth meeting with Trump, but her first with the new vice presidential candidate.

Bakus had never heard of Vance before he was nominated, but she said she’s been impressed by what she’s learned about his story and his troubled childhood in Middletown, Ohio.

“He’s a nice guy,” Bakus said. “He grew up with a tough family life to begin with, but he showed everyone that there’s always a chance to become something bigger, since we live in the United States.”

The Biden-Harris campaign focused Saturday morning on warning union members in Michigan about what a Trump-Vance victory would mean for them. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, warned that Trump’s trade and tax policies would hurt working people and criticized his stance on issues like the prevailing wage.

“I can only imagine, after seeing the performance in Milwaukee, that they’re going to rewrite history and pretend that they care about working people,” Stabenow said. “But I just have to say, ‘Give me a chance.’ I’ve worked with both of them and I know that’s not true.”

The comments, which appeared in the press Saturday morning, seemed to signal a shift in news coverage in Michigan, away from focusing solely on reproductive rights and toward reaching out to union members in the state.

The comments came after Republicans in Milwaukee launched a push to rally union votes in the Midwest. Sean O’Brien, executive chairman of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, gave a speech promoting organized labor and smearing the “corporate elite.”

The union vote is a key factor for both campaigns in Michigan, where Trump captured a large share of the working-class vote, sometimes referred to as the Reagan Democrats, in Macomb County in 2016.

Vance described himself as a working-class fighter in his RNC speech, recounting his difficult childhood in the Rust Belt and his family’s struggles in Kentucky and Ohio.

“In small towns like mine in Ohio, or nearby in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan, in states across the country, jobs were being sent overseas and children were being sent to war,” he said.

But Trump later went off script in his convention speech, calling for the resignation of UAW leader Shawn Fain, who had called Trump a “scumbag” and endorsed Biden for the presidency. He made the remarks after warning about the outsourcing of U.S. auto jobs.

“The United Auto Workers should be ashamed of themselves for letting this happen,” Trump said Thursday.

Gary Walker, a Livonia native who now lives in Westfield, Indiana, is a retired Ford mechanic who spent his final years working at the gear and axle plant in Sterling Heights. He was in line around 7 a.m. for the rally, which will be his fourth Trump rally.

Walker said he was confident Trump would appeal to Michigan auto workers.

“Why wouldn’t anybody support him?” Walker said. “The union leaders, they’re all Democrats, they’re part of the Democratic machine, you might call it. But most of the members I know think for themselves.”

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