Former President Trump on Tuesday sat down with his former press secretary and the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for a town hall event in Michigan, marking his first campaign event since an apparent assassination attempt over the weekend.
Trump spoke with Sanders, who has emerged as a popular surrogate for the former president, for an event in Flint in the heart of a key battleground state.
Here are five takeaways from the event.
Trump returns to trail after latest assassination attempt
Tuesday marked Trump’s first appearance on the campaign trail since an incident on Sunday in which a Secret Service agent engaged an alleged would-be-assassin who had stuck the muzzle of his gun through the fence outside Trump’s golf course.
It marked the second time since July that Trump has been targeted by a gunman following an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.
“Only consequential presidents get shot at,” Trump said Tuesday.
The former president praised the Secret Service, saying the agency “did a hell of a job.” And he offered rare kind words for President Biden and Vice President Harris, saying they had a “very nice” call in which Biden and Harris separately checked in to see how he was doing after the latest incident.
There are no indications the latest attempt on Trump’s life will affect the presidential campaign. Trump is slated to hold a rally in New York on Wednesday and in North Carolina on Saturday. Harris was in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and will visit Michigan and Wisconsin before the end of the week.
Trump stokes fear about auto industry
The former president painted a bleak picture of what would happen to the auto industry, offering up exaggerated claims about the fate of thousands of jobs across the country if he does not win in November.
“If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry within two-to-three years. It will all be gone,” Trump claimed.
He later called Michigan “an afterthought in cars.”
“If a tragedy happens and we don’t win. There will be zero car jobs, manufacturing jobs, it will all be out of here,” he added.
The former president warned that the Biden administration’s incentives for automakers to manufacture electric vehicles would devastate the industry. Trump signaled an openness to some electric vehicles, crediting an endorsement from Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Trump’s solution was to increase drilling and gasoline production and to slap significant tariffs on competitors who import cars into the United States.
Data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that roughly 8,800 auto and parts manufacturing jobs were lost under Trump’s first term, while that sector added about 128,000 jobs during the Biden administration.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) leadership has endorsed Vice President Harris in November’s election.
Trump rejects ‘rambling’ label
Trump’s rallies and speeches often feature extended riffs where he goes off script and off topic. It was a line of attack for Harris during last week’s presidential debate, when she encouraged viewers to attend a Trump rally and listen to him talk about Hannibal Lecter and complain about his problems.
On Tuesday, Trump delivered a lengthy and meandering answer in which he spoke about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, appeared to confuse Bagram Air Base with an oil reserve in Alaska, spoke briefly about the latest assassination attempt against him, and threatened to impose a 200 percent tariff on cars imported from Mexico.
At the conclusion of that answer, Trump argued it was more “productive” than what Harris says on the trail.
“The fake news likes to say, ‘Oh he was rambling.’ No, no. That’s not rambling. That’s genius,” Trump said of his own comments. “When you can connect the dots. Now, Sarah, if you couldn’t connect the dots, you got a problem. But every dot was connected. And many stories were told in that little paragraph.”
Trump mocks climate change
The former president has long cast doubt on the effects and reality of climate change, and he did so again during Tuesday night’s event.
Trump was adamant that the biggest threat to the public was not climate change, something Democrats have described as an existential issue, but nuclear warfare that could wipe out civilization.
“Not that the ocean is going to rise in 400 years an eighth of an inch, and you’ll have more seafront property if that happens,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Is that good or bad?’ I said, isn’t that a good thing if I have a little property on the ocean? I have a little bit more property, I have a little bit more ocean.”
Trump needled the idea that experts and lawmakers refer to it as “climate change” after it was previously called “global warming.”
“These people. I don’t know if they’re for real,” Trump said. “But if they’re not, they’re covered by the words climate change. If it gets hotter that’s good, if it gets hotter that’s good. Global warming wasn’t working so well.”
Sanders steps into campaign spotlight
Tuesday’s event marked a notable moment for Sanders, the Arkansas governor who served as Trump’s press secretary during his first term in the White House.
Sanders has remained popular with Trump’s base, and she got a prime speaking slot during the Republican convention in which she sought to humanize the former president as a good boss who supported his female employees.
The Arkansas governor introduced Trump by speaking about her kids and how they keep her “humble.”
“Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” Sanders said. “You would think after four years of straight failure, she would know a little humility. Unfortunately she doesn’t.”
Sanders later described being a mom as “maybe the only job harder than being President of the United States.” And she vowed the women of the country “are going to make sure we do our part” to put Trump back in the White House.
The Arkansas governor’s presence at Tuesday’s event could signal how the campaign intends to use prominent surrogates to appeal to key voting blocs, like women, in the closing stretch of the election.
