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GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN – Donald Trump closed a years-long presidential campaign early Tuesday following a historic cycle that included two apparent attempts on his life, a pivot to a new Democratic candidate and multiple criminal indictments — with one last rally where he pushed for immediate election results.
“We want the answer tonight,” Trump said from a podium in the battleground state after calling into question the integrity of voting machines and decrying the possibility that results could take up to two weeks.
Before launching into a nearly two-hour speech that stretched past 2:00 a.m., Trump seemed wistful as he strolled down the catwalk to applause from supporters.
His voice was raspy after back-to-back rallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and finally Michigan.
“This has been an incredible journey. It's very sad in a way. This is the last one,” Trump said as he stood before the crowd. He recalled being in Grand Rapids in 2016, when there were doubts about his election odds.
The reminiscing didn’t last long before Trump launched a meandering closing speech where he promised to “make Detroit greater than it ever was," shared a story about billionaire supporter Elon Musk, described the Lincoln Bedroom, railed against Nancy Pelosi saying he wanted to call her the "B-word," talked about migrant gangs, threatened to tariff Mexico 100 percent over immigration and compared his crowd sizes to that of Kamala Harris.
"They have no enthusiasm. She had a rally today. She couldn’t have had more than a hundred people there. I had all four stadiums full," Trump said.
Trump, who is known to be superstitious, decided to hold his last rally in the same city in Michigan where he wrapped up his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The former president was almost two hours late to his Grand Rapids event and kept speaking until the early morning hours. As it continued, people in the audience, some of whom had lined up since early in the morning for a seat inside the arena, began to trickle out.
Trump called on his supporters to get out and vote, and declared “if we win Michigan, we win the whole thing.”
On Trump’s last day of campaigning, the former president also spoke about his third run for the White House as more of an end of an era that began in 2015 – and could finally dawn if he doesn't win the presidency a second time.
“It’s now been nine years we have been fighting, step by step together,” Trump said. “There is love in this room, I think there is love in this country, I think it is a much bigger movement than we understand.”
“There will never be anything like this,” Trump said. At the end of the rally, he invited his adult children to join him on stage.
Trump has appeared to grow sentimental as he discusses the political movement he has led — one characterized by his signature rallies where supporters turn up by the thousands, standing in line for hours. Over the last week, Trump reminisced about his nearly decade-long run of holding political gatherings, repeatedly making comments about concluding his campaigning for office.
“This is really the end of a journey,” Trump said Monday, “but a new one will be starting.”
Trump has made it clear he wants to be remembered as the only political figure who could command such a following, even when, he notes, he is eventually succeeded by another Republican.
“We’re doing something historic. This has never been done before,” Trump said in Raleigh, during the first of four such stops Monday. “They’ll never have rallies like this.”
Kellyanne Conway, who ran Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, described his rallies as “central” to his campaign. “People feel like they are part of something enjoyable and consequential, not a conventional campaign, but.a movement. We are entering the 10th year - and final homestretch - of the Trump rallies. Millions of people have shown up to watch him stand up, put up and speak up. The people are his oxygen.”
Colleen Kill, 31, from Rochester Hills, Michigan, was waiting in line to find a seat inside the arena on Monday night and said coming to a Trump rally was on her “bucket list.” Kristi Wackerle, 44, from Grand Rapids, said she wanted to “be part of history.”
“This could be the last time,” she said.
Trump boasted about his crowd sizes even as the numbers at some recent events fell. On Monday, Trump claimed he could have filled Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum “three times, maybe four times” on Friday night. (He filled much of the 18,000 capacity arena, but there were still open seats inside.)
He made that claim Monday as he stood in a not-full Dorton Arena in Raleigh, where photos show eight years ago, nearly every seat was occupied during his Election Eve rally.
Later, in Pittsburgh, Trump mocked Harris for holding a competing rally in the city, calling it “little” and “quite embarrassing.” He marveled at the “frisky” crowd he had drawn to the PPG Paints Arena, which was on its feet cheering and jeering through at least the first hour of his speech. Left unmentioned: the draped-off upper level and the empty seats that dotted the lower bowl.
The Harris campaign turned Trump’s obsession into a frequent campaign trail taunt.
Over the past week, as Trump confronts the possible end of his political career, his demeanor has oscillated wildly — sometimes within the same day. At times in this final stretch, he has displayed the cutting humor that endeared him to millions of Americans first as an entertainer and then as a politician. On Wednesday speaking to press from a sanitation truck and wearing a bright-orange safety vest at a Green Bay, Wisconsin rally, Trump mocked President Joe Biden over his muddled “garbage” remark.
But on Sunday, after a series of polls showed positive signs for Harris, Trump was at his most aggrieved. While criticizing Democrats’ handling of the southern border, Trump said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 after failing to overturn the results of the 2020 election. While speaking about the enhanced security protections at his rallies following two attempted assassinations, he said he wouldn’t “mind” if “somebody would have to shoot through the fake news” to get to him. His campaign later said Trump was not wishing harm on the media.
By the time he rallied in North Carolina hours later, Trump — who has kept up an aggressive schedule of three or four rallies a day down the campaign’s home stretch while sometimes bemoaning the pace — seemed confused about what state he was in.
On Monday, Trump was more nostalgic as he stared down an uncertain future.
“It’s sad,” he said in Pittsburgh. “We’ll never have this. But we’ll have other get togethers.”
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