Grand Rapids:
Donald Trump will hold his first campaign rally on Saturday since narrowly escaping an assassination attempt a week ago and fresh from his nominating convention where his takeover of the Republican Party was cemented.
Trump will appear in Grand Rapids, the battleground state of Michigan, along with his new pick for vice president, US Senator JD Vance of Ohio. It will be their first campaign event together as the now official Republican presidential ticket.
Republican Party officials said during Trump’s nominating convention in Milwaukee this week that his brush with death last Saturday had changed him and that when he gave his acceptance speech Thursday night he would call for national unity.
Although Trump began the speech with a call for national unity and healing, much of his speech was his familiar list of grievances and attacks on his opponents.
It’s unclear what kind of speech Trump will give on Saturday, but his die-hard supporters often attend such events to hear Trump’s more traditional inflammatory rhetoric.
Trump and Vance will take the stage in Grand Rapids with the Republican Party unified behind them after this week’s nominating convention. In contrast, the Democrats are in crisis and it is no longer certain that President Joe Biden will be the Democratic candidate who will face Trump in the November 5 elections.
Biden is facing growing calls from many elected officials in his own party to step down as the party’s White House nominee and end his reelection bid, following his poor debate performance against Trump last month.
Biden is trailing in opinion polls and trailing in every swing state against Trump. Many Democrats fear he has virtually no path to victory and that the party needs a new presidential candidate to take on Trump.
The rally in Grand Rapids will be in an indoor arena, unlike the event in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend, which was outdoors. In that event, the shooter managed to scale the roof of a building outside the Secret Service perimeter before opening fire on Trump, cutting off his ear, killing one rally attendee and injuring several others.
The US Secret Service, responsible for protecting Trump, declined to comment on security at the event in Grand Rapids. An investigation is underway into security failures at Butler’s rally.
“The Secret Service does not discuss the means and methods used in our protective operations,” the agency said in a statement.
Trump gave a detailed account of his brush with death in his convention speech Thursday, telling the audience he was only speaking to them “by the grace of Almighty God.”
(Reporting by Tim Reid in Grand Rapids; Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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