GRAND RAPIDS, July 21 — Donald Trump commanded the stage for nearly two hours yesterday in his first rally since a gunman tried to kill him last week, with a fiery, rambling speech to thousands of passionate supporters.
Here are five takeaways from the vision painted by the Republican presidential nominee for the United States:
‘Shovelling ballots into wheelbarrows’
Last week’s Republican National Convention notably downplayed Trump’s persistent lie that the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, was stolen from him.
But when Trump returned to the campaign trail Saturday night he did not hold back.
“The Radical Left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020 and we’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024,” he said, in just one of his references to voter fraud.
“We want a landslide that is too big to rig,” he added later.
He warned those who voted early to “follow your vote” and insisted that 2020 saw some states “shovelling ballots into wheelbarrows, moving them around”.
And the crowd cheered as he called on them to “Fight, fight, fight”.
That evoked both the moments after his attempted assassination last Saturday — when, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service agents, he raised a fist in the air and shouted “fight” — and his comments before the 2021 Capitol riot, when he warned supporters “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
‘I’m not an extremist at all’
Trump also again disavowed Project 2025, a shadow manifesto characterised by opponents as an authoritarian, right-wing wish list.
“The other side is going around trying to make me sound extreme... I’m not an extremist at all,” he complained.
The sweeping blueprint from the hardline Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government in Trump’s image was created by “the radical right... they’re seriously extreme,” he said, insisting “I don’t know what the hell it is.”
The official Republican platform ratified at the Milwaukee convention is less conservative than Project 2025 in several areas, including abortion and entitlements.
But many of the more extreme proposals in the Heritage Foundation handbook are indistinguishable from Trump’s remarks at his rallies and his own video statements, while Democrats say members of his inner circle have been linked to it.
Still Trump insisted the idea that he is a “threat to democracy” is “misinformation.”
“Last week, I took a bullet for democracy,” he said.
‘Stupid’ Biden
Trump also laid in to the crisis engulfing rival Biden’s candidacy, as Democrats fearing that at 81 the president is too old to serve for another four years pressure him to step off the ticket.
“They have no idea who they candidate is... Sort of interesting, this guy goes and he gets the votes and now they want to take it away. That’s democracy,” Trump said in Michigan.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he said, had turned on the president “like a dog.”
Branding Biden “stupid” and “a low-IQ individual”, he also denigrated Vice President Kamala Harris — who, if the president steps aside, is in a strong position to take over — as “crazy”.
‘Beautiful’ note from Xi
Trump again touted his relationships with autocrats around the globe, insisting of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un that getting along had made the United States safer.
“All he wants to do is buy nuclear weapons and make them,” he said of Kim.
“I said, just relax, chill. You’ve got enough. You got, you got so much nuclear weapons, so much, I said, just relax... let’s go to a baseball game.”
He called Hungarian President Viktor Orban a “very powerful leader” and again insisted that, had he been US leader, President Vladimir Putin of Russia would never have invaded Ukraine in 2022.
And he said he received a “beautiful note” after the assassination attempt from President Xi Jinping of China, calling him a “great guy.”
He said he had told reporters that Xi was “a brilliant man. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”
‘Migrant crime’
Trump also unleashed a litany of threats against illegal migrants, decrying an “invasion” over the US border and again suggesting that Democrats were allowing it to happen in hope of using their votes.
On day one of his return to the Oval Office, he promised to launch “largest deportation operation in the history of our country.
“When I return to the White House, we will stop the plunder, rape, slaughter and destruction of our American suburb cities,” he continued.
“We’re going to get the bad ones out. We’re going to get them out immediately. It’s not going to take long.”
He promised to “crush migrant crime” and complained that countries such as Venezuela are “dumping their criminals into the United States of America, and we’re not going to take it anymore.” — AFP
