Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 20, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump, holding his first campaign rally Saturday since surviving an assassination attempt, dismissed concerns that he is a threat to democracy, triumphantly telling a cheering crowd: “Last week I took a bullet for democracy.”

“I’m not an extremist at all,” he continued at the rally in swing state of Michigan, dismissing his reported links to Project 2025, a radical shadow manifesto led by figures close to him that has been characterised by opponents as an authoritarian, right-wing wish list.

ALSO READ: How the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump unfolded

And he mocked the rival Democratic Party, roiled by unprecedented pressure for President Joe Biden to abandon the White House race amid concerns over his age and fitness to serve, if reelected, until 2029.

“They have no idea who their candidate is… This guy goes and he gets the votes, and now they want to take it away. That’s democracy,” Mr. Trump told the 12,000-strong crowd of passionate supporters.

Even as he veered into his typical, rambling campaign speech, the rally represented a moment remarkable by any measure, with Mr. Trump back on stage exactly one week since a gunman tried to kill him.

The Republican presidential nominee appeared wearing a new, smaller, flesh-coloured bandage over his right ear, bloodied in the attack by a 20-year-old gunman at a rally in Pennsylvania that killed one bystander.

Security was reportedly tight inside the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, amid questions over Secret Service lapses at the Pennsylvania rally — though there were few visible signs of any greater law enforcement presence.

Meanwhile, Mr. Biden loyalists continued to defend the embattled president as the drumbeat of calls for him to abandon his campaign grows louder.

The 81-year-old and his team have remained publicly adamant that he is staying in the race, though some reports suggest discussions have begun in his inner circle about how exactly he might step aside.

Biden’s ‘big decision’

There has been massive speculation over who could replace him. As vice president, Ms. Harris appears best positioned to do so.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive who sought the party’s presidential nod in 2020, gave Ms. Harris a boost Saturday without turning her back on the president.

“Joe Biden is our nominee,” she said on MSNBC. “He has a really big decision to make.

“But what gives me a lot of hope right now is that if President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up, to unite the party, to take on Donald Trump, and to win in November.”

Some Democrats, however, fear that such a late switch could trigger chaos, dooming the party at the polls.

Team Trump, for its part, is effervescent after an exceptional streak of luck — from the failed assassination bid to favorable court rulings and Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month.

“I had God on my side,” he told the Republican National Convention Thursday, at which he demonstrated his absolute control over the party, firing supporters up to a rare pitch.

Saturday was Mr. Trump’s debut campaign appearance with running mate J.D. Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who at age 39 could help win over critical swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Ahead of Mr. Trump’s speech, Mr. Vance warmed up the crowd, taking a swipe at Ms. Harris.

“I did serve in the United States Marine Corps and build a business. What the hell have you done, other than collect a check?” he said of the former U.S. senator and California attorney general.

Mr. Trump’s supporters had begun lining up in their dozens in Grand Rapids on Friday, nearly a full day before the rally began.

Edward Young, 64, preparing for his 81st Trump rally, was wearing a T-shirt showing the already iconic photo of Mr. Trump pumping his fist immediately after being shot.

“They have turned him into a martyr and left him alive,” he said. “Now he’s more powerful than ever.”

Donald Trump, defiant and bandaged, accepted the GOP presidential nomination on July 18 at the Republican National Convention in a speech that described in detail the assassination attempt that could have ended his life just five days earlier before laying out a sweeping populist agenda, particularly on immigration.

The 78-year-old former president, known best for his bombast and aggressive rhetoric, began his acceptance speech with a softer and deeply personal message that drew directly from his brush with death. Moment by moment, the crowd listening in silence, Trump described standing onstage in Butler, Pennsylvania, with his head turned to look at a chart on display when he felt something hit his ear. He raised his hand to his head and saw immediately that it was covered in blood.

“If I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark,” Trump said. “And I would not be here tonight. We would not be together.”

Trump’s address, the longest convention speech in modern history at just under 93 minutes, marked the climax and conclusion of a massive four-day Republican pep rally that drew thousands of conservative activists and elected officials to swing-state Wisconsin as voters weigh an election that currently features two deeply unpopular candidates. Sensing political opportunity in the wake of his near-death experience, the often bombastic Republican leader embraced a new tone he hopes will help generate even more momentum in an election that appears to be shifting in his favor.

“The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart,” Trump said, wearing a large white bandage on his right ear, as he has all week, to cover a wound he sustained in the Saturday shooting. “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”

While he spoke in a gentler tone than at his usual rallies, Trump also outlined an agenda led by what he promises would be the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. He repeatedly accused people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally of staging an “invasion.” Additionally, he teased new tariffs on trade and an “America first” foreign policy.

Trump also falsely suggested Democrats had cheated during the 2020 election he lost — despite a raft of federal and state investigations proving there was no systemic fraud — and suggested “we must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement,” even as he has long called for prosecutions of his opponents.

He did not mention abortion rights, an issue that has bedeviled Republicans ever since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federally guaranteed right to abortion two years ago. Trump nominated three of the six justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump at his rallies often takes credit for Roe being overturned and argues states should have the right to institute their own abortion laws.

Nor did he mention the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump supporters tried to stop the certification of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has long referred to the people jailed for the riot as “hostages.”

Also read | Republicans find god’s plans in Trump’s escape 

Indeed, Trump barely mentioned Mr. Biden, often referring only to the “current administration.”

“It was Donald Trump who destroyed our economy, ripped away rights, and failed middle class families,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chair, in a statement after the speech. “Now he pursues the presidency with an even more extreme vision for where he wants to take this country.”

With less than four months to go in the contest, major changes in the race are possible, if not likely.

Trump’s appearance came as Mr. Biden, the 81-year-old Democratic incumbent, clings to his party’s presumptive nomination in the face of unrelenting pressure from key congressional allies, donors and even former President Barack Obama, who fear he may be unable to win reelection after his disastrous debate.

Long pressed by allies to campaign more vigorously, Mr. Biden is instead in isolation at his beach home in Delaware after having been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Hours before the balloons were scheduled to rain down on Trump and his family inside the convention hall, Biden deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks appeared nearby in Milwaukee and insisted over and over that Mr. Biden would not step aside.

“I do not want to be rude, but I don’t know how many more times I can answer that,” Fulks told reporters. “There are no plans being made to replace Biden on the ballot.”

Thursday’s RNC program seemed designed to project strength and masculinity in an implicit rebuke of Mr. Biden.

Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White called Trump “a real American bad ass.” Kid Rock performed a song with the chorus, “Fight, fight!,” echoing the word Trump mouthed on stage in Pennsylvania as Secret Service agents surrounded him. And wrestling icon Hulk Hogan described the former president as “an American hero.”

Hogan drew a raucous response when, standing on the main stage, he ripped off his shirt to reveal a red “Make America Great Again” shirt.

“As an entertainer, I try to stay out of politics,” Hogan said as he briefly broke character. “I can no longer stay silent.”

Like many speakers during the convention, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that recent events were divinely inspired and that he wondered “if something bigger is going on.”

“I think it changed him,” Carlson said of the shooting, praising Trump for not lashing out in anger afterward.

“He did his best to bring the country together,” Carlson added. “This is the most responsible, unifying behavior from a leader I’ve ever seen.”

Former first lady Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter and former senior adviser, joined Trump in the convention hall ahead of his speech, making their first appearances there. Neither woman spoke.

At nearly 93 minutes, the former president’s speech eclipsed the 74 minutes for which he spoke eight years ago, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The convention has showcased a Republican Party reshaped by Trump since he shocked the GOP establishment and won over the party’s grassroots on his way to the party’s 2016 nomination. Rivals Trump has vanquished — including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — put aside their past criticisms and gave him their unqualified support.

Even his vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s choice to carry his movement into the next generation, was once a fierce critic who suggested in a private message since made public that Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”

Security was a major focus in Milwaukee in the wake of Trump’s near-assassination. But after nearly four full days, there were no serious incidents inside the convention hall or the large security perimeter that surrounded it.

The Secret Service, backed by hundreds of law enforcement officers from across the nation, had a large and visible presence. And during Trump’s appearances each night, he was surrounded by a wall of protective agents wherever he went.

Meanwhile, Trump and his campaign have not released information about his injury or the treatment he received. The former president on Thursday described his story of surviving the attack — and vowed he would not talk about it again.

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump told the packed convention hall. The crowd of thousands, which was listening in silence, shouted back, “Yes, you are.”