Donald Trump held his first campaign rally since being shot and thanked his supporters Saturday for their outpouring of love while ridiculing Democrats for being a party of corrupt insiders intent on dislodging their leader in a coup.
Gone was the big, white, gauze-filled bandage that he wore during the week to protect his wounded ear. It was replaced with a smaller, flesh-colored dressing.
‘Last week I took a bullet for democracy,’ he said to roars of support.
As Joe Biden, 81, recovers out-of-sight at home from COVID-19, 78-year-old Trump walked out to a thunderous welcome, providing an extraordinary political split screen for the 2024 election.
While one president fights for his political life, another has survived a 2020 defeat, a criminal conviction and an assassin’s bullet to once again stand astride his party.
He returned to the stage in Grand Rapids a changed man, according to his confidants.
But he launched quickly into his usual rally schtick, holding a poll of his supporters to find out who they would most like to face in the election.
They booed for Vice President Kamala Harris, but booed even harder for Biden.
‘I don’t think we have to go too much further,’ said Trump, before turning his attention to Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, another possible candidate.
‘You have a terrible governor who did a terrible job. i’d like to run against her.’
Security was visibly tighter than previous rallies. Not only was it held indoors, but bags were given closer scrutiny than usual by Secret Service agents beside the Magnetometers.
Streets around the Van Andel Arena were closed off with dump trucks and snipers could be seen on nearby buildings.
It did not stop thousands of supporters lining up before doors opened. The Trump campaign claimed 25,000 packed the arena (which actually has a capacity of somewhere over 12,000) with another 15,000 outside.
After the formality of the Republican National Convention and its delegates last week in Milwaukee, Trump reveled in the adoration of his grass roots supporters.
They held their fists in the air as he entered the arena and chanted ‘fight, fight, fight,’ in homage to the way Trump responded after picking himself up from the ground after being wounded last weekend.
He used the occasion to distance himself from the radical Project 2025 plan developed by allies and former officials as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.
‘Some on the right – severe right – came up with this Project 25,’ he said. ‘And I don’t even know … they’re sorta the opposite of the radical left … I don’t know what the hell it is … some of the things – they’re seriously extreme.’
Democrats have hit him with the extreme plans. ‘I don’t know what the hell it is,’ claimed Trump.
His 107-minute speech included all his rally greatest hits. He promised to bring car manufacturing back to Michigan, pledged the biggest deportation operation ever seen, and said he would build an ‘iron dome’ for the nation like Israel has as he painted a picture of a nation in decline, ‘run by fools.’
He said he would prefer electrocution to being killed by sharks, mocked his own combover when he saw it on the big video screens and made his favorite Hannibal Lecter joke. (‘The late great Hannibal Lecter would like to have you for dinner.’)
And he said criminal indictments would not deliver election victory to Biden.
‘He’s a weak, pathetic man who can’t run an election. So he indicts his opponent, thinking that’s going to win,’ he said.
‘Third world countries do this a lot, banana republics do it a lot.
‘We’ve never done it. And we’re going to teach you why they can never do it again.’
Michigan is one of the key swing states that could decide the outcome of the election. Trump won it by a little more than 10,000 votes in 2016, but Joe Biden flipped it four years later.
Grand Rapids holds particular special significance for Trump. He held his final election rally of the 2016 campaign here before securing a shock win.
He returned for his final 2020 rally but could not secure victory.
During the past week family, advisers and officials all said the shooting had changed Trump and his party convention speech on Thursday was billed as a chance to call for unity and understanding.
That lasted about 15 minutes as the former president quickly segued into a rally speech, slamming Biden, ‘crazy Nancy Pelosi,’ and his usual targets.
On Saturday he went straight into his usual barnstorming rally fare, much to the delight of an army of fans who weren’t wasn’t about to be deterred by the small matter of an assassin’s bullet.
‘One of the messages that President Trump put out after what happened in Butler was a message that could best be characterized by two words: Fear not,’ said Blake Marnell, a veteran of more than 40 rallies.
Dressed in his famous ‘brick suit,’ he was present in Butler, less than 10 yards from Trump, as he was shot in the ear and Secret Service agents bundled him to the ground.
Beside him were other ‘Front Row Joes’ who travel the country from rally to rally.
‘We saw the hand of God protecting the president last week and I feel safe being here because that hand protects all of us here,’ said Rick Lane, 55, from Pennsylvania,wearing one of the ‘I bleed red, white, and Trump’ T-shirts made by his own apparel company.