Back on the campaign trail for the first time since the second assassination attempt against him, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told his supporters Tuesday at a town-hall-style event in Michigan that it turns out that being a former president running for office is a more “dangerous business” than race car driving and bull riding.
Mr. Trump said he “appreciated” that President Biden and his top rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, reached out to him to express their concerns before returning to attacks against the administration and vowing to take “back our country” partly by slapping massive tariffs on automobile imports.
“Only consequential presidents get shot at,” Mr. Trump said at the event in Flint, where he fielded friendly questions from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary. “But what can you do? You have to do what you have to do, right? You have to be brave. Otherwise, we are not going to have a country left.”
Mr. Trump stressed that tariffs could help Michigan return to its status as the “Capitol of Cars” and said tariffs “are the greatest thing ever invented.”
“If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry within two to three years. It will all be gone,” Mr. Trump said. “China is going to take over all of your business because of the electric car.”
Mr. Trump also repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election.
“Everybody knew we won that election,” Mr. Trump said, triggering applause from the crowd.
Before the event, Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said, “Michiganders won’t be fooled by the lies that Trump” and his running mate J.D. Vance of Ohio “spew.”
“Trump is still the same self-serving person that he always has been and this November, Michiganders will rebuke him at the ballot box,” Ms. Barnes said.
Mr. Trump stunned the political establishment in 2016, becoming the first Republican since Ronald Reagan to carry Michigan in a presidential election. Mr. Biden put the state back in the Democrat column in 2020.
According to polls, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump are locked in a nail-biter in Michigan and other swing states.
Mr. Trump had his second close encounter with a would-be assassin over the week after Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old with a scattered political history and a criminal record, targeted him at his golf course in Florida.
Mr. Trump has blamed Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris for fostering the hate toward him.
“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Mr. Trump said of the gunman on Fox News Digital. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I am the one who is going to save the country.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he had learned that running for office was treacherous.
“They think race car driving is dangerous — no,” he said. “They think bull riding … is pretty scary, right? No. This is a dangerous business. So we have to keep it safe,” Mr. Trump said to applause from the crowd.
The race for The White House has been tumultuous.
Mr. Trump survived another shooting attempt in Pennsylvania on July 13, when a bullet grazed his ear. He responded by raising his fist in defiance and telling his supporters, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Days later, Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential race — forced out after a disastrous debate against Mr. Trump in June and growing concerns he couldn’t win the election — and passed the baton to Ms. Harris.
