Trump holds first meeting after assassination attempt with new running mate

Donald Trump holds his first campaign rally since surviving an assassination attempt, returning to the uncertain state of Michigan with his new running mate.

“It was exactly one week ago, to the hour, to the minute,” Trump said, reflecting on the July 13 shooting in Pennsylvania that left him with a bloody ear, a supporter in the crowd dead and two others wounded.

“I stand here before you only by the grace of Almighty God,” he said, the white gauze around his ear now replaced by a flesh-colored bandage.

“I shouldn’t be here right now,” he continued.

Trump was joined by Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio at the pair’s first event since being nominated by the GOP at the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee.

“I find it hard to believe that a week ago a hitman tried to take Donald Trump’s life, and now we have a huge crowd in Michigan to welcome him back to the campaign trail,” Vance said before Trump’s arrival.

Michigan is one of a handful of crucial swing states expected to determine the outcome of the November presidential election.

Trump narrowly won the state in 2016 by just over 10,000 votes, but Democrat Joe Biden won again in 2020 by a margin of 154,000 votes on his way to the presidency.

After an unusually subdued and emotional display during the Republican convention, Trump returned to his usual rally mode, lashing out at his Democratic rivals, repeating his lies about the 2020 election and peppering his speech with jokes that drew laughter from the enthusiastic audience.

At one point, Trump looked at a screen showing him from an unusual angle and joked about his oversized hair.

“That’s a serious loser. What’s up with that?” he said. “I apologize. Man! I looked up and said, ‘Wow!’ That’s like a work of art!”

At another point, when inviting a supporter onto the stage, he joked, “He doesn’t carry any weapons!”

But Trump also spoke about the shooting, reenacting how he turned his head to look at a map of the southern border crossings projected on a large screen and narrowly avoided the bullet hitting his ear.

“I owe my life to immigration,” he said. “That’s true.”

Hours before he took the stage, Trump’s supporters gathered in the streets of downtown Grand Rapids in preparation for the former president’s speech.

On Friday morning, lines of supporters were already forming and by Saturday afternoon (local time) the line was almost one and a half kilometres long from the entrance of the 12,000-seat Van Andel Arena.

Many in the packed arena were seen wearing shirts with Trump on stage after he was shot, his fist in the air after surviving the shooting, along with the customary red caps that read “Make America Great Again.”

Many streets, which were closed as an added security measure, were filled with food and clothing vendors.

Among them was a North Carolina vendor who said he spent the night making shirts that read “Trump Vance ‘24.”

There was also a significant police presence in downtown Grand Rapids, with officers on nearly every block, but others patrolling on horseback and bicycles.

The heightened security outside the venue created a tense atmosphere, with some attendees saying they were nervous about the drones flying over them.

The event took place indoors, a departure from last week in Pennsylvania, where the shooter fired from a rooftop outside the safety zone.

Upon entering the indoor arena in downtown Grand Rapids, attendees had to pass through a metal detector, but the security presence inside appeared comparable to previous events.

“This is the tightest security I’ve ever seen,” said Renee White, who said she’s been to 33 of Trump’s rallies. “Normally we can take some small bags, but today I had to just leave stuff there.”

White was 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 taken, at least I’m doing something I love, right?” White said.

Trump’s choice of Vance was seen as an attempt to win support among so-called Rust Belt voters in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, who helped propel Trump to his surprise victory in 2016.

Vance specifically mentioned these places during his convention acceptance speech, emphasizing that he grew up in a poor, small town in Ohio and promising not to forget the working class, whose “jobs were sent overseas and their children were sent to war.”

Democrats dominated recent elections in Michigan, but Republicans now see an opening in the state as Democrats become increasingly divided over whether Biden should withdraw from the race.

Biden has insisted he won’t quit and has tried to turn the focus back on Trump, saying on Friday that Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention showed a “dark vision of the future.”

Trump polled the crowd at his rally on Saturday to see who they would see as his opponent. There were cheers for Biden, but loud booing when Trump asked about Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump and his team have tried to portray the Democratic effort to replace Biden as a “coup.” This appears to be part of a larger effort to distract from Trump’s attempts 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 bosses are frantically trying to overturn the results of their own party’s primaries to remove Crooked Joe Biden from the ballot,” he said. “As you can see, the Democratic Party is not the party of democracy. They are, in fact, the enemies of democracy.”

Trump later resisted attempts to portray him as an extremist, even as he promised mass deportations and threatened retaliation against his political enemies.

“They keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy…’ Last week I took a bullet for democracy,” he said to loud cheers.

Trump also again sought to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a policy and personnel plan for a second Trump term that was drafted by a host of former Trump administration officials.

Trump criticized the project, which has become a centerpiece of Biden’s campaign against Trump, as “far right” and “very extreme,” much like the “radical left.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he insisted.

The 81-year-old incumbent Democrat, who appeared in Detroit this month, is currently in isolation at his beachfront home in Delaware recovering from COVID-19.

Grand Rapids, the largest city in Kent County, has historically been a Republican stronghold but has increasingly turned blue. It was one of three Michigan counties that Trump won in 2016 but Biden flipped in 2020. It’s also an area where Rep. Nikki Haley secured a significant number of votes when she ran against Trump in the GOP primary, a group of voters both presidential campaigns now hope to win over. Haley urged her supporters to back Trump in a speech on the convention floor.

Democrat Hillary Scholten, Rep. from Grand Rapids, is among a growing number of lawmakers calling on Biden to withdraw from the race after last month’s disastrous debate performance.