Donald Trump walks off stage after speaking at a campaign rally on July 20, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Donald Trump was joined by his newly minted running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, on Saturday at the former president’s first campaign rally since the attempt to assassinate him last weekend.
The two were greeted by an amped up crowd at an indoor arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Here’s what happened:
New running mate: Vance, who fired up the crowd ahead of Trump’s remarks, said, “I gotta be honest, it’s still a little bit weird seeing my name on those signs,” referring to the Trump-Vance campaign material waving behind him in the audience.
Vance defended his loyalty to the US, after Vice President Kamala Harris said he “will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country.”
“There’s some bad news actually, Vice President Kamala Harris, she doesn’t like me,” Vance said in remarks about two hours before Trump took the stage. “Kamala Harris said something to the effect that … I have no loyalty to this country,” he continued. “Well, I don’t know, Kamala, I did serve in the United States Marine Corps and build a business. What the hell have you done other than collect a check?”
Before the vice presidency, Harris was the district attorney of San Francisco, California’s attorney general, and then the state’s junior senator.
Vance later came back out to introduce Trump for a roaring crowd.
On the rally shooting: Trump, who wore a smaller, beige-colored bandage on his ear, said he “took a bullet for democracy.”
The former president, who spoke for nearly two hours, thanked the staff at Butler Memorial Hospital, where he was taken minutes after the shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician, said Saturday that Trump is “recovering as expected” from a gunshot wound to his ear. Investigations into the rally shooter and handling of security at the event continue.
Trump noted in his first joint interview with Vance that people at his rally last week noticed there was someone on the roof before the assassination attempt.
Support from Musk: Trump said he spoke to tech billionaire Elon Musk before coming to the Grand Rapids rally. The former president said Musk didn’t mention reporting from The Wall Street Journal that he will be committing around $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC.
“Elon endorsed me the other day, and I read, I didn’t even know this, he didn’t even tell me about it, but he gives me $45 million a month,” Trump said. “And I talked to him just a little while ago to say I was coming here, how you doing, and he didn’t even mention it.”
About world leaders: Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping and other world leaders wrote to him after last week’s assassination attempt. He said he “got along very well with President Xi, who’s a great guy,” and claimed that he worked well with other world leaders, too, even though they understood during his presidency that the “jig was up” in terms of taking advantage of the US on a world stage.
Biden campaign’s response: President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign blasted Trump’s remarks at the rally, saying Trump is “focused only on himself.”
“He’s peddling the same lies, running the same campaign of revenge and retribution, touting the same failed policies, and – as usual – focused only on himself. The only unity we saw today was between Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their Project 2025 agenda,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
Project 2025 refers to the policy blueprint created by a conservative think tank. Democrats have latched on to some of the document’s controversial right-wing proposals, while Trump has tried to distance himself from the platform, despite dozens of people from his former administration having a hand in its creation.
