At Michigan rally, Trump seizes on uncertainty surrounding Biden

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Donald Trump seized on the escalating uncertainty surrounding President Joe Biden’s candidacy on Saturday, telling a boisterous crowd here that Democrats “have no idea who their candidate is” and polling the audience about whether they would rather he run against Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall.

“They have a couple of problems,” Trump joked. “No. 1, they have no idea who their candidate is. That’s a problem. But we’ll see, hopefully they get it worked out.”

The call-and-response between the former president and the crowd — they booed loudest at the mention of Biden, but also for Harris and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — reflected the stark asymmetry of the unfolding campaign.

One week after surviving an attempted assassination, Trump returned to the rally stage with his large white bandage removed and a running mate beside him, while the Democratic president’s ability to continue his campaign is unclear.

While Biden was sidelined from the campaign trail, publicly maintaining he is staying in the race but recovering from Covid in Delaware, Trump was pressing his advantage. The Republican convention had just wrapped, with a new platform passed, fresh Trump-Vance merchandise printed and fundraising steady. On Saturday, Trump, cracking jokes and appearing in high spirits, spoke for more than an hour and 45 minutes — even longer than the 90-plus-minute speech he delivered on Thursday in Milwaukee, the longest acceptance speech by a presidential nominee in history.

Trump’s campaign has signaled it prefers to run against Biden rather than a new, younger Democratic nominee. But his senior adviser, Chris LaCivita, insisted in an interview with POLITICO on Thursday that Trump’s path to winning is strong regardless of the challenger.

Trump, for his part, repeatedly referred to Biden on Saturday as “stupid,” and Harris as “crazy.”

Throughout the speech, the crowd — which filled the arena to capacity — repeatedly chanted “Fight!” It’s a reference to Trump’s message to his supporters in Butler, Pennsylvania, as Secret Service officers escorted him offstage after he was shot in the ear.

“Last week, I took a bullet for democracy,” Trump said, disputing Democrats’ claims that a second Trump administration would imperil democracy. He claimed, rather, that Democrats working to push Biden out of the campaign are “the enemies of democracy” for trying to replace Biden after he won the primaries.

He also defended himself against efforts by Biden and his allies — including at a fundraiser headlined by Harris in Massachusetts on Saturday — to highlight Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-aligned initiative designed to serve as a policy guidebook for a second Trump White House, but from which Trump and his campaign have sought to distance themselves. Some of the Republicans involved in the Project 2025 effort previously worked for Trump.

“They’re seriously extreme,” Trump said of some of the policies the group has proposed. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

Trump’s remarks were as meandering as they were in Milwaukee. He drew constant cheers and laughter throughout the speech, which included riffs on sharks, electric boats, the philosophy of foul language, Hannibal Lecter and Trump’s “work of art” combover. He said President Xi Jinping of China wrote him “a beautiful note” after he was shot, as did “most of the leaders.” And Trump invited onto the stage Brian Pannebecker, a retired auto worker who organizes the Auto Workers for Trump group.

He railed against the “really low IQ people” currently in the White House, at one point saying America is “a nation run by fools and stupid people.”

“And the president in particular, he has about a 70 IQ,” Trump claimed, without evidence. “And he’s going against 210, and it never works out.”

And he drew roaring cheers around the room talking about his plans to withhold funding from schools requiring vaccines, to “keep men out of women’s sports,” to eventually enact single-day voting on paper ballots and to curb illegal immigration, starting with “mass deportations” if he returns to office.

“They’re dumping their criminals into the United States of America,” Trump said. “And we’re not going to take it anymore.”

Saturday also served as a debut of his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), after this week’s GOP convention.

The arena broke into cheers of “JD!” as Vance took the stage for his first campaign rally after Trump chose him as his running mate, a long-awaited announcement that appeared to cement Trump’s strategy of targeting working-class voters, particularly those in Midwest battleground states.

“I find it hard to believe that a week ago an assassin tried to take Donald Trump’s life, and now we’ve got a hell of a crowd in Michigan to welcome him back,” Vance said.

He quickly pivoted to his counterpart, Harris, who could be at the top of the Democratic ticket if Biden decides not to seek another term.

The arena erupted in resounding boos for Harris, whom Vance chided for questioning his loyalty to the country.

“Well, I don't know, Kamala,” Vance said sarcastically. “I did serve in the United States Marine Corps and built a business. What has she done other than collect the check from her political offices?”

Vance’s 11-minute speech offered a preview of the role the 39-year-old first-term senator will serve on the trail in the coming months. He discussed his own roots in rural Ohio — how he was raised by his grandmother because of his mother’s drug addiction — and shared his sympathy for families ravaged by the fentanyl crisis. He criticized both Democrats and Republicans as “broken in very profound ways” when it came to foreign policy and manufacturing policies.

“Both parties, if you remember, signed up for shipping millions of good manufacturing jobs off to Mexico and China, until President Trump came along and said, ‘We got to make more stuff,”’ Vance said.

Vance, who went on to attend college, graduate from Yale Law School and launch a career as a venture capitalist in San Francisco, continued to lean into his humble roots throughout his first rally speech as running mate.

“I gotta be honest, it’s still a little bit weird to see my name on those signs,” Vance said. “You think about how I grew up … no one in my immediate family had ever gone to college. What a great country this is.”

The rally was in a key swing area of the battleground state: Trump carried Grand Rapids-anchored Kent County by 3 points when he won Michigan in 2016, but lost it by 6 points when Biden flipped the state back four years ago.

Trump called onto stage two of Michigan’s Republican Senate candidates, Sandy Pensler and former Rep. Mike Rogers, with Pensler announcing he was dropping out to endorse Rogers, whom Trump had previously backed. Pensler, whose name will still appear on the Aug. 6 primary ballot since the official withdrawal deadline has long since passed, said he was inspired by seeing Trump this week kiss the helmet of a firefighter who died after being shot at his rally last weekend.

In interviews with more than a dozen Trump supporters Saturday, almost no one expressed concerns about Trump facing a younger Democrat if Biden steps down. They said they didn’t know much about Vance, but like what they’ve learned from the little they’ve learned so far.

And they weren’t nervous about coming to Trump’s first rally since a man opened fire across a field last weekend in Pennsylvania — a shooting that killed one and injured Trump and two rally-goers.

Deb Brink, who lives in Grand Rapids, signed up this week to be a volunteer after not attending a Trump rally since 2016.

“I gave my life to Jesus. I'm in his hands,” Brink said. “So I'm not worried.”

One Michigan woman, wearing a shirt featuring a collage of photos of Trump’s face, drove five hours Saturday to attend her 94th Trump rally. She declined to give her name, explaining she was supposed to be at work instead of at the rally in Grand Rapids. A week earlier, she said she had been seated in the fifth row of Trump’s rally in Butler.

“That could have been the last rally, and then what would we have done?” she said. “All the people's hopes for the future of the country would have been basically diminished.”

Blake Marnell, a San Diego man who is known for attending Trump rallies wearing an orange “brick suit” representing a border wall, was in the front row as Trump was struck by a bullet at his Pennsylvania rally. And he was in the front row again inside the downtown Grand Rapids arena, saying he extended his time off work to drive to Michigan from the GOP’s Milwaukee convention once Saturday’s rally was announced.

“So many people I spoke with were here for their first rally ever,” Marnell said. “And I took tremendous encouragement from that, in that in the wake of the tragedy in Butler, that they were not cowed into staying home and simply watching on television. They want to see President Trump deliver his message on the campaign trail. They want to see him be a leader.”

After Trump’s nomination acceptance speech earlier this week in Milwaukee — which touched on themes of faith in God and unity, before pivoting to a long, rambling speech resembling most of his rallies — speakers at the rally Saturday also emphasized faith.

“If you don't believe that God intervenes in the affairs of men, I’d like to ask you to reconsider. How many of you here believe in God?” asked Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), before leading the crowd in an opening prayer. Hands flew up as cheers filled the arena. “How many of you believe he listens to prayers?”

More loud cheers rang out, with multiple rally goers screaming “Jesus!”

Glen Parker, from Mason, Michigan, wore a T-shirt featuring a photo of Trump moments after he was shot Saturday, fist in the air, with “Bulletproof” written underneath. Parker lifted up his shirt to reveal a bulletproof vest underneath. His 8-year-old son standing next to him wore a shirt with a photo of Trump’s mugshot.

“I felt like after the shooting at the last one, there may not be kids here,” Parker said. “And I feel like, raise them right. So I’m bringing them out. I’m not going to live in fear. I’ll be prepared.”

Anusha Mathur contributed to this report.