A week after a bullet nearly cost him his life, former President Donald Trump delivered a speech filled with divisive rhetoric that was largely in keeping with his usual tone.
Although Trump told reporters he would lean toward a message of unity, the former president used his speech Saturday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to insult President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, call Biden allies “thugs,” claim without evidence that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and characterize migrants as coming from prisons, detention centers and mental institutions.
The booming, expressive intonation that defined his political career returned, along with his penchant for insults, calling Biden “crooked Joe,” “old weakling,” “low IQ” and “stupid,” and Harris “laughing Kamala,” “crazy” and “nuts.”
He called Democrats “enemies of democracy” and lamented the “grossly incompetent people who run our country.”
Trump has lashed out at migrants, saying the United States is a “dumping ground” for the world that “makes fun of us.” He called for a “great deportation” to “get them out of there.”
The former president has long claimed without evidence that Democrats committed fraud in 2020, a false message he reiterated Saturday.
“It’s the only thing they’re good at,” he said, later adding that “they have absolutely no shame.”
The insults and divisive rhetoric come just days after Trump said in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that “the discord and division in our society must be healed.”
Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa criticized Trump’s rally in a statement.
“We were promised a new Donald Trump who would unite the country, but tonight all we saw was the same Donald that Americans have consistently rejected: peddling the same lies, waging the same campaign of revenge and retaliation, advocating the same failed policies and, as usual, focusing only on himself,” Moussa said.
The Trump campaign has said it doesn’t care who leads the Democratic ticket, but a senior Trump adviser said she prefers Biden to be the nominee because the campaign has planned for the matchup.
In his speech Saturday, Trump criticized Democrats who are urging Biden to withdraw from the race.
“This guy got votes, and now they want to take them away,” Trump said. “That’s democracy. They talk about democracy. ‘Let’s take them away.’”
Trump also thanked Americans for their “extraordinary outpouring” of support following Saturday’s shooting.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Trump said.
Saturday’s rally is Trump’s first since the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, a week ago, in which one participant was killed and two others were hospitalized.
The former president said the media had “covered the story fairly,” which is not how he usually talks about journalists. However, a few minutes later, he started criticizing journalists again.
Trump also revealed at the rally that Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote him a note after the shooting.
“I get along very well with President Xi. He’s a great guy,” Trump said. “He wrote me a nice note the other day when he heard what happened.”
Trump did not describe the contents of the note.
The atmosphere in the arena seemed joyous and patriotic, with many supporters expressing confidence in Trump’s electoral prospects.
“If he can fight that hard, have all that money, do what he wants and come out here and fight for us, that’s pretty powerful,” said Ben Beckon of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, took the stage before the former president and almost immediately lashed out at his opponent, Harris.
“What else has she done besides collect a check from her political offices?” he asked, adding that she was dealing with the border “during the greatest catastrophe, the open border that we have ever had in this country.”
He later tried to refute the idea that his ticket had extreme views.
“There’s nothing radical about stopping poison, gangs and criminals from taking over our country,” Vance said. “We need to close this border, stop fentanyl and make America safe again for American citizens.”
Biden’s campaign had preemptively criticized Saturday’s rally, calling the Trump-Vance ticket “the most extreme, anti-working class presidential ticket in American history.”
“Today, an Ivy League billionaire who ripped off working people will team up with an Ivy League millionaire who left working people behind to take on the campaign,” the campaign said in an email ahead of the rally.
One supporter at the Trump rally summed up the former president’s running mate’s decision: “If Trump trusts him, I trust him,” Yvonne Beadle of Algonac, Michigan, told NBC News.
“I don’t know much about him,” said Mandie Kirkpatrick of Ludington, Michigan. “Of course, there’s a lot of stuff out there about him. I trust Trump’s decision, so if he says he’s good, then I trust him.”
The Grand Rapids rally comes days after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump officially became the Republican presidential nominee.
His acceptance speech was the longest in convention history, surpassing the previous record set in 2016. During his speech, which marked his first public remarks since the shooting, he offered his most detailed recollection of the assassination attempt yet.
“The incredible thing is, before the gunshot, if I had not moved my head at the very last moment, the assassin’s bullet would have hit its target perfectly, and I would not be here with you tonight,” Trump said in his acceptance speech Thursday.
Much of the rest of his convention Donald Trump’s speech returned to familiar themes and rhetoric that he has used on the campaign trail. He reiterated his promise to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” accused his opponents of election fraud without evidence and criticized the United Auto Workers union.
Michigan remains a key state on the road to the White House. Biden won the state in 2020, while Trump won it in 2016.
Polls indicate that Biden and Trump remain in a tight race in key states. A CBS News/YouGov poll from July found that in key states, Biden had 48% of the vote and Trump had 51%, although the results were within the margin of error.
