Trump, Vance join rally, throw insults at Biden

Donald Trump returned to the stage in Grand Rapids, Michigan, two days after his 92-minute Republican National Convention and a week after he was wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet.

Although his nearly two-hour speech after his near-death experience began politely, it wasn’t long before he was back in his normal routine.

Within minutes of insisting that his movement is more united than ever, he resumed his attacks on his favorite targets, including President Joe Biden, the news media, a supposedly stolen election, migrants from the southern border, Democratic congressional leaders and his less-favored unions.

“He’s stupid. He’s a stupid person. Low IQ, a low IQ person,” Trump said in a bitter moment, at one point insisting that “we’re a nation run by fools and stupid people.”

Trump’s voice, as it did on Thursday, the fourth night of the RNC, sounded relatively subdued, with less force than it had just before a shotgun blast pierced his right ear.

“I stand before you only by the grace of Almighty God,” he said, the white gauze on his ear now replaced by a flesh-colored bandage. “I shouldn’t be here right now,” he continued.

Trump tapped into that energy in the opening moments of his speech, thanking God, the crowd, the doctors at Butler Memorial Hospital and even the news media (which, he admitted, had reported the situation fairly).

He also thanked Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, whom he calls his personal doctor, for his care after the shooting. “A great admiral, a great doctor,” Trump said. (Though technically, neither is true: Jackson’s license to practice medicine has reportedly expired , and the U.S. Navy demoted him from retired admiral to retired captain following investigations into alleged misconduct as a White House physician.)

Then, after a few moments of discussing the RNC, Trump turned to the Democrats and their upcoming national convention. “And they’ve got some problems,” he said, turning away from the teleprompter. “This guy goes and he gets the votes, and now they want to take it away from him. That’s democracy — they talk about democracy, ‘(then) let’s take it away from him.’”

When he returned to the prompter, he returned to a statesmanlike approach: “But now we are moving forward as one movement… it is one movement, and we are more united, more determined, than ever before. We have never been more determined,” he said.

And then there’s the shift.

“Bad things happened last time. We’re not going to let them happen this time — bad, bad things happened,” Trump said. The 2020 election, he said, was “rigged” by “radical left Democrats” — an argument that has failed time and again in many courts for lack of evidence.

Joe Biden is “the dumb president we have, dumb, he’s a dumb person.”

Nancy Pelosi is once again “crazy as a bedbug.”

The U.S., he said, is weak on energy policy because of “its stupidity.” (The U.S. is a net exporter of energy, produces more oil than ever before and is the world’s largest oil producer.)

America’s enemies, he said, will “again be afraid of the United States,” before echoing the compliments of Hungarian authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, who said Trump will restore world order.

Trump also again rejected the far-right Project 2025 plan for the presidential transition, calling it a project of the “far right.”

“But I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it … but what they’re doing is misinformation and disinformation,” Trump said. “And they keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy,’ and I say, what the hell have I done for democracy? Last week I took a bullet for democracy!”

Trump did acknowledge that he “knows some of them, I know who they are,” regarding the authors of Project 2025, though he failed to mention that the Schedule F employment category he approved late in his presidency is fundamental to Project 2025’s plan to replace existing government employees and workers with conservative loyalists at all levels of government. Trump’s own Agenda47 series of policy videos, however, promises to reinstate Schedule F, which was gutted early in the Biden administration. (Trump’s own plan promises to “reissue the 2020 Executive Order to restore the President’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats” and “reform federal departments and agencies, and fire all corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.”)

It was the first time Trump endorsed his new running mate, vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, for the event. It was also the first time they were nominated by the GOP at this week’s RNC.

“I find it hard to believe that a week ago a hitman tried to take Donald Trump’s life, and now we have a huge crowd in Michigan to welcome him back to the campaign trail,” Vance said before Trump’s arrival.

The event was also newsworthy for another reason: Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Sandy Pensler made an emotional announcement onstage, next to Trump, that he was withdrawing from the race to support Trump-endorsed candidate Mike Rogers. Rogers is one of several candidates seeking to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.