Trump returns to campaign trail in Michigan with new running mate, Vance, at his side

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Republican Donald Trump will hold his first public campaign rally Saturday since he was injured in a car crash. attempted murderwith an event in the state of Michigan, which is all about, along with his new running mate.

The joint meeting with Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio is the first for the pair since they became GOP nominees in the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Trump kicked off the Republican gathering by naming Vance as his vice presidential candidate, and closed it with a speech urge unity after a July 13 shooting in Pennsylvania that left Trump with a bloody ear and killed one man in the crowd.

“I am running for president for all of America, not for half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America,” Trump said Thursday night in what was the longest convention speech in modern history, clocking in at just under 93 minutes.

Michigan is one of the crucial swing states expected to determine the outcome of the presidential election. Trump narrowly won the state by just over 10,000 votes in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden won it back in 2020, winning by a margin of 154,000 votes to clinch the presidency. With Vance at his side, Trump will deliver speeches in Grand Rapids, a historically Republican stronghold that has turned increasingly blue in recent elections.

Trump’s choice of Vance was seen as a move to win support among so-called Rust Belt voters in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, who helped Trump achieve his surprise victory in 2016. Vance specifically mentioned those posts during his convention acceptance speech, where he emphasized that he grew up in poverty in a small Ohio town and vowed not to forget the working class, whose “jobs were sent overseas and their children were sent to war.”

Democrats have dominated recent elections in Michigan, but Republicans now see an opening in the state as Democrats become increasingly divided over whether Biden should drop out of the race. Biden has insisted he is not giving up and has tried to refocus on Trumpwho said Friday that Trump’s speech at the Republican convention showed a “dark vision of the future.”

The 81-year-old incumbent Democratic Rep., who appeared in Detroit is isolating at his beachfront home in Delaware this month after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

Grand Rapids is the largest city in Kent County, one of three Michigan counties that Trump won in 2016 but Biden flipped in 2020. It is also a area where Nikki Haley won a significant number of votes in the Republican primary in February, and both campaigns are now hoping to win over this group of voters.

U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Democrat who represents Grand Rapids, is one of the growing number lawmakers calling on Biden to withdraw from the race after disastrous debate performance.