Riding high after a triumphant convention that formalized Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s White House nominee, the ex-president returns to the campaign trail Saturday for his first rally since narrowly escaping assassination.
As Trump descends on Michigan to stump in public with his freshly announced vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance for the first time, Joe Biden’s campaign is grappling with an internal Democratic Party revolt from senior lawmakers and donors calling on the 81-year-president to quit the race.
Biden is currently off the campaign trail nursing a case of Covid while he and his inner circle engage in political firefighting, as party stalwarts warn that by remaining on the ticket Biden could lead Democrats to defeat of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Team Trump for its part is effervescent. The Republican National Convention went off without a hitch, and the candidate’s mission of demonstrating absolute control over the party and firing up his base appears accomplished.
With Saturday’s rally at an indoor arena in downtown Grand Rapids, Trump is to embrace a moment that is remarkable by any measure: striding back on stage exactly one week since a 20-year-old gunman on a rooftop sprayed an outdoor Pennsylvania rally with bullets, killing one attendee and wounding Trump.
“I had God on my side,” he told the convention late Thursday, as he described in detail how a bullet narrowly missed his head and grazed his ear.
Eyes on security
Attendees at Saturday’s 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) rally though are unlikely to hear Trump discuss last week’s trauma, as he told the convention: “You’ll never hear it from me a second time because it’s actually too painful to tell.”
Instead he will flaunt his new status as the party’s flagbearer after officially accepting the nomination at the convention — and bask in the adoring reception in store for when he walks out to a partisan crowd.
He will almost certainly dive into the aggressive rhetoric of his typical campaign speeches, in which he assails the Biden administration over illegal immigration, inflation, crime, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, China policy, oil drilling and gender issues.
All eyes however will be on the security posture in Grand Rapids, especially given how major questions remain over US Secret Service lapses at the Pennsylvania event.
Saturday’s rally will occur inside Van Andel’s arena, an enclosed 12,000-capacity sports facility that allows more complete control of a perimeter.
But security nevertheless is expected to be extra tight around Trump in the wake of the most egregious Secret Service failure in decades.
He also makes his debut campaign appearance with vice presidential pick Vance, a US senator from Ohio who, at 39, is literally half Trump’s age and could appeal to younger voters.
Vance is author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling memoir about growing up poor in working-class America. That blue-collar connection could help Trump, a billionaire businessman, win over critical swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile Biden’s campaign is lurching from crisis to crisis.
A disastrous debate performance against Trump three weeks ago sparked panic about his age and health, and whether the veteran politician has the capacity to stave off a resurgent Trump in November.
Most polls show Trump on course for a return to the Oval Office.
More than 30 House Democrats and four senators have now called on Biden to drop out, and several senior party luminaries including Barack Obama have reportedly urged the president to reconsider his decision to stay in the race.
