“They want to make me look like an extremist” when instead “I took a bullet for democracy”. Donald Trump returns to the campaign trail after the Republican convention that crowned him.
In his first rally since the attack, the former president recalls Black Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania: “I shouldn’t have been here. I had God beside me”he told thousands of supporters who waited for hours, some all night outside to get into the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area. Trump no longer wears the large white ear patch that has accompanied him in recent days, which has now been replaced by smaller, almost invisible patches. The Chinese president “wrote me a beautiful” letter after the attack, and other world leaders have done the same, Trump said, launching into praise of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. They are “smart, tough” leaders who “love their country.” Xi, he added, is “brilliant. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”
He then also mentioned Hungarian President Victor Orban: he is right in saying that “we need to have someone to protect us”. He was introduced on stage by Ohio Senator JD Vance, his deputy who was making his debut at a rally. “I chose him because he is on the side of workers and blue collar workers. He will be a fantastic vice president”, Trump assured before launching into a speech lasting over 100 minutes, during which he rediscovered his aggressive tone against Joe Biden. “He has a low IQ of 70”, he said, calling the president the “worst in history”, “incompetent”. Even Kamala Harris, against whom Trump recently raised his tone predicting that she could replace Biden, was not spared. “She is crazy but not like Nancy Pelosi”, he observed. Then he launched a poll among the audience asking who it would be better to run against to win: from the shouts of his fans, the preference went to Biden, considered weaker and easier to beat.
“I would love to run with your governor Gretchen Whitmer,” the former president noted. Whitmer is one of the names, along with governors Josh Shapiro and Gavin Newsom, that have been floated to replace Biden if the president decides to retire. “They don’t even know who their candidate is,” Trump joked, referring to tensions within the Democratic Party.whose developments are closely followed by his staff. The former president’s campaign is in fact positioning itself to launch a harsh attack on Harris, considered more of a threat than the president.