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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump held his first campaign rally Saturday since surviving an assassination attempt, returning to the electoral battleground state of Michigan with his newly named running mate.
“That was exactly a week ago, even down to the hour, even down to the minute,” Trump told the crowd, recalling the July 13 shooting in Pennsylvania that ended with a bloody ear and the death of a supporter and other spectators. Two people were injured.
Trump attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with Ohio Sen. JD Vance for their first event since both became the GOP nominees.
“It’s hard for me to believe that a week ago a murderer tried to take Donald Trump’s life and now there’s a huge crowd in Michigan welcoming him back to the campaign trail,” Vance noted before Trump’s arrival.
Michigan is one of several key swing states expected to decide the outcome of November’s presidential election. Trump won the state by just over 10,000 votes in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden flipped the odds in 2020, winning the presidency by 154,000 votes.
After appearing unusually subdued and emotional during the Republican convention, Trump returned to his usual campaign style, insulting his Democratic rivals, repeating his lies about the 2020 election and peppering his speech with jokes that drew laughter from an enthusiastic audience.
Attendees were asked to pass through metal detectors upon entering the venue, but security inside appeared consistent with previous events.
“This is the most stringent security I’ve ever seen,” said Renee White, who said she has attended 33 Trump rallies. “Normally we can bring in little bags, but today I had to leave my stuff outside.”
White was sitting behind a podium at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when the gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop. The woman described the shooting as “surreal” but said it would not stop her from attending his rallies.
“If they’re going to kill me, at least I’m doing something I love, right?” She was back behind Trump on Saturday, sitting in almost the same spot she had in Butler.
Trump picked Vance in part to help him win over voters in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio that helped him pull off a surprise victory in 2016. Vance singled out those places in his acceptance speech at the convention, emphasizing his roots in poverty in a small Ohio town and promising not to forget the working class whose “jobs were shipped overseas and whose children were shipped to war.”
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