One week after a bullet nearly took his life, former President Donald Trump delivered a speech filled with divisive rhetoric that was largely in line with his usual tone.
Despite Trump having told reporters that he would pivot to a message of unity, the former president used his Saturday speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to call President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris names, refer to Biden’s allies as “thugs,” argue without evidence that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election, and characterize migrants as coming from prisons, jails and mental institutions.
The bombastic, expressive intonation that has defined his political career returned, as well as his penchant for name-calling, referring to Biden as “Crooked Joe,” “feeble old guy,” “low IQ” and “stupid” and Harris as “Laughin’ Kamala,” “crazy” and “nuts.”
He referred to Democrats as “enemies of the democracy” and bemoaned the “grossly incompetent people running our country.”
Trump railed against migrants, arguing that the U.S. was a “dumping ground” for the world, which is “laughing at us.” He called for a “big deportation” to “get them the hell out.”
The former president has long claimed without evidence that Democrats committed fraud in 2020, a false message that he reiterated on Saturday.
“That’s the only thing they’re good at,” he said, adding later that “they have no shame whatsoever.”
The name-calling and divisive rhetoric came just days after Trump said in his Republican National Convention acceptance speech that “the discord and division in our society must be healed.”
Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa slammed Trump’s rally in a statement.
“We were promised a new Donald Trump who would unite the country — instead all we saw tonight was the same Donald Americans keep rejecting over and over: He’s peddling the same lies, running the same campaign of revenge and retribution, touting the same failed policies, and — as usual — focused only on himself,” Moussa said.
The Trump campaign has argued that it does not care who is at the top of the Democratic ticket, but a senior adviser to Trump said that it prefers Biden to be the nominee because the campaign had been planning for that matchup.
During his Saturday speech, Trump criticized the Democrats who are urging Biden to exit the race.
“This guy goes and he gets the votes, and now they want to take it away,” Trump said. “That’s democracy. They talk about democracy. ‘Let’s take it away from him.'”
Trump also thanked Americans for their “extraordinary outpouring” of support after last Saturday’s shooting.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Trump said.
Saturday’s rally is Trump’s first since the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, one week ago during which one attendee was killed and two were hospitalized.
The former president said that the media “covered it fairly,” a departure from how he usually talks about reporters. However, minutes later he pivoted back to criticizing journalists.
Trump also revealed during the rally that China’s President Xi Jinping wrote him a note after the shooting.
“I got along very well with President Xi. He’s a great guy,” Trump said. “Wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened.”
Trump did not describe the contents of the note.
The atmosphere at the arena appeared cheerful and patriotic as many supporters expressed confidence in Trump’s electoral prospects.
“If he can fight that hard and have all that money and do whatever he wants and comes out here and fights for us, that’s pretty powerful,” said Ben Beckon from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Vance took the stage before Trump, almost immediately laid into his opponent, Harris.
“What has she done other than collect a check from her political offices?” he said, adding that she was handling the border “during the biggest disaster, open border that we’ve ever had in this country.”
Later, he tried to head off the suggestion that his ticket holds extreme views.
“There’s nothing radical about stopping the poison and the gangs and the criminals, from taking care of our country,” Vance said. “We’ve got to shut down that border, shut down the fentanyl and make America safe for American citizens again.”
The Biden campaign had preemptively criticized Saturday’s rally by calling the Trump-Vance ticket “the most extreme, anti-worker presidential ticket in American history.”
“Today, an Ivy league billionaire who screwed over workers will partner with an Ivy League millionaire who left workers behind to hit the campaign trail,” the campaign said in an email ahead of the rally.
A supporter at Trump’s rally summed up the former president’s running mate decision: “If Trump trusts him, I trust him,” Yvonne Beadle from Algonac, Michigan, told NBC News.
“I don’t know much about him,” said Mandie Kirkpatrick from Ludington, Michigan. “Of course there’s a lot of things flying around about him. I trust Trump’s decision, so if he says he’s good, then I trust that.”
The Grand Rapids rally comes on the heels of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Trump officially became the Republican nominee for president.
His acceptance speech was the longest in convention history, topping his previous record he 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 so far.
“The amazing thing is that prior to the shot, if I had not moved my head at the very last instant, the assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark, and I would not be with you tonight,” Trump said during Thursday’s acceptance speech.
Much of the rest of his convention speech circled back to familiar themes and rhetoric he uses on the campaign trail. He reiterated a pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” accused opponents of cheating in elections without evidence, and criticized the United Auto Workers union.
Michigan remains a crucial swing state on the road to the White House. Biden won the state in 2020, while Trump won it in 2016.
Polling indicates that Biden and Trump remained locked in a tight race in battleground states. A July CBS News/YouGov poll found that in battleground states, Biden polled at 48% and Trump at 51%, though the results were within the margin of error.
