Trump at his first rally since the attack: “I took a bullet in the name of democracy” | USA Elections

If today is Saturday afternoon, it must be a massive rally of Donald Trump somewhere in the United States. The former president had time to meet his supporters in a packed stadium in Grand Rapids (Michigan) today, but it was not an election event. It was the first rally given by Trump since exactly seven days ago he was the victim of an attack at another event in Butler (Pennsylvania) that almost cost him his life. It was also the first in which he was accompanied by the vice presidential candidate he chose last Monday: Ohio Senator JD Vance.

Trump arrived on stage twenty minutes later than scheduled and without the bandage he had worn all week, which he had replaced with a Band-Aid on his right ear. He had come straight from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, on the other side of Lake Michigan. “They say I’m a threat to democracy,” he said at the start of the rally. “How can they say that? Last week I took a bullet in the name of democracy!”

The four-day triumphant convention (“I think there has never been a more united and loving convention,” the Republican candidate said) served to prove that the party is completely at his feet. There the former president appeared in a calm, magnanimous form, as if the assassination attempt had deeply changed him. It was just a mirage. Trump displayed his usual style this Saturday, and the call for “national unity” he made after the assassination suddenly seemed a thing of the past.

During his more than 100-minute speech, he was energetic and joking, even faster than usual, making his people laugh and attacking his enemies: the press, Joe Biden (whom he called “idiot” several times), Kamala Harris (he called her “crazy”), Mexicans, immigrants… This image was different from the one he projected on Thursday on the stage of the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee during his acceptance speech for the White House candidacy. Then he spoke with serious calm (and a lot: at one and a half hours, he broke the record for the longest such speech in history).

Michigan is one of the key states (along with Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania) where the November election will decide the outcome. To win votes in three states that are part of the Rust Belt, once home to American heavy industry that has been destroyed by globalization, Trump has chosen Vance, with his lower-class origins and history of reform that he amassed in The bestseller Hillbilly, a rural elegy And that took him first to Yale University, and later to Silicon Valley and Washington.

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Vance is from Ohio, so some of those attending Saturday’s rally greeted him with timid jeers because of the sports rivalry between that state and Michigan. “I chose him because he cares about workers, people like you, who have been forgotten for too long, although not when I was in the White House,” Trump said.

Later, the presidential candidate reviewed how he experienced the attack, although he did so in a much less emotional way than in his speech at the convention. “I am here,” he explained, “only by the grace of Almighty God. “Something very special happened.”

First medical report

Before the rally, the Republican candidate shared on Truth, his social network, the first medical report that was made public after the assassination attempt. It was signed by Ronny Jackson, who was his doctor in the White House (like, previously, Barack Obama and George W. Bush) and is now a Republican congressman from Texas. In that report, one can read: “The bullet passed less than a quarter of an inch (0.6 centimeters) from entering his head, and hit the upper part of his right ear. The mark created a wound two centimeters wide, which extended to the cartilaginous surface of the ear. (…) Due to the highly vascular nature of the ear, there is still intermittent bleeding that requires bandaging. Due to the extensive and blunt nature of the wound, no stitches were required.

The rest of the speech in Grand Rapids was an enhanced and elaborated version of the classic Trump rally. He promised the biggest tax cut in American history, return patriotism to schools, raise tariffs on China and make America great again, as always. He talked about the border and how he plans to “crush migrant crime.” “The only good thing about the criminals we send millions to other countries is that they make our gang members and criminals appear as civilized people,” he said before saying that immigration has “saved his life.” The former president recalled that last Saturday he turned to look at a graph on the subject at his rally in Pennsylvania and that it saved him from being hit by a bullet that passed closest to his head.

Trump also launched a vocal defense of economic isolationism, aimed clearly at Michiganders who had lost so much from industrial relocation. He sold himself as the only man capable of avoiding World War III and promised to build an iron dome to protect the country from foreign missiles, “in the style they have in Israel.”

He praised autocrats such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he defined as “a brilliant and intelligent man”, “a fierce man who has 1.4 billion Chinese in his fist”. In another of his classics, he told an anecdote about French President Emmanuel Macron, whose French accent he enjoys making fun of. According to the Republican candidate, one day, when he was president, he forced the French president by telephone to reverse some tariffs approved by parliament “or wherever they apply the law in that country.”

He spoke without a break, except for a brief moment in which he pulled a spontaneous man wearing a union T-shirt out of the audience and gave the stage to two state politicians who were facing each other in the Senate; one of whom had received an endorsement from Trump, the other announced live that he was quitting the campaign. And then, an hour and three quarters after he began speaking, he ended the rally in a rhythm hold on I’m coming, by Sam and Dave. He’s come to love that Southern soul vibe. The message of its lyrics makes sense: “Hold on,” Trump seemed to tell his followers in Grand Rapids this Saturday. “Hold on, I’m already going to the White House.”

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