GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN – Donald Trump wrapped up a years-long presidential campaign early Tuesday after a historic cycle that included two apparent attempts on his life, a pivot to a new Democratic candidate and multiple criminal indictments, with one final rally in which he pressed for the immediate election results.
“We want the answer tonight,” Trump said from a podium in the key state after questioning the integrity of voting machines and denouncing the possibility that results could take up to two weeks.
Before launching a nearly two-hour speech that lasted until 2:00 a.m., Trump appeared melancholy as he walked down the runway to the applause of his supporters.
His voice was hoarse 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 in front of the crowd. He recalled being in Grand Rapids in 2016, when there were doubts about his electoral chances.
The flashbacks didn’t last long before Trump launched into a meandering closing speech in which he promised to “make Detroit greater than it ever was,” shared a story about billionaire supporter Elon Musk, described the Lincoln Bedroom, criticized Nancy Pelosi saying she wanted to call it the “B word,” talked about immigrant gangs, threatened to Mexico tariff 100 percent on immigration and compared his crowd size to Kamala Harris’s.
“They have no enthusiasm. She had a rally today. She couldn’t have had more than a hundred people there. She had all four stadiums full,” Trump said.
Trump, known for being superstitious, decided to hold his last rally in the same Michigan city where he concluded his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The former president arrived almost two hours late to his event in Grand Rapids and continued speaking until the early hours of the morning. As it continued, people in the audience, some of whom had lined up since early in the morning to sit inside the arena, began to file out.
Trump called on his followers to go out and vote and declared that “if we win Michigan, we will win everything.”
On Trump’s final day of the campaign, the former president also spoke of his third bid for the White House as more of the end of an era that began in 2015 and that could finally dawn if he does not win the presidency for a second time.
“It’s been nine years that we’ve 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 come up on stage with him.
Trump seems to become sentimental when talking about the political movement he has led, one characterized by his signature rallies in which thousands of supporters show up and queue for hours. Over the past week, Trump recalled his nearly decade-long streak of holding political rallies and repeatedly commenting on the conclusion of his campaign for office.
“This is truly the end of one journey,” Trump said Monday, “but a new one will begin.”
Trump has made clear that he wants to be remembered as the only political figure who could command so many supporters, even when, he notes, he is eventually succeeded by another Republican.
“We are doing something historic. This has never been done before,” Trump said in Raleigh, during the first of four such stops on Monday. “They will never have demonstrations like this.”
Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, described his rallies as “central” to his campaign. “People feel part of something pleasant and transcendent, not of a conventional campaign, but of a movement. We are entering the tenth year – and final stretch – of the Trump rallies. Millions of people have turned out to see him stand up, endure and speak. “People are their oxygen.”
Colleen Kill, 31, of Rochester Hills, Michigan, was waiting in line for a seat inside the stadium Monday night and said attending a Trump rally was on her “bucket list.” Kristi Wackerle, 44, of Grand Rapids, said she wanted to “be a part of history.”
“This could be the last time,” he said.
Trump boasted about the size of his crowd even as numbers at some recent events fell. On Monday, Trump claimed he could have packed Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum “three times, maybe four times” on Friday night. (It filled much of the 18,000-capacity stadium, but there were still free seats inside.)
He made that claim Monday while standing in a not-full Dorton Arena in Raleigh, where photos show that eight years ago, nearly every seat was filled during his election-eve rally.
Later in Pittsburgh, Trump mocked Harris for holding a competitive rally in the city, calling it “small” and “pretty embarrassing.” He marveled at the “playful” crowd he had drawn to PPG Paints Arena, which stood cheering and booing for at least the first hour of his speech. What’s not mentioned: The curtain-covered upper tier and the empty seats dotting the lower bowl.
The Harris campaign turned Trump’s obsession into a frequent mockery during the campaign.
Over the past week, as Trump faces the possible end of his political career, his behavior has swung 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 artist and then as a politician. On Wednesday speaking to the press from a medical truck and wearing a bright orange safety vest in Green Bay, Wisconsin. During the rally, Trump mocked President Joe Biden for his confusing “trash” comment.
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 “should not have left” the White House in 2021 after failing to overturn the 2020 election results. While discussing enhanced security protections at his rallies after two assassination attempts, he said he wouldn’t “care” if “someone had to wade through fake news” to get to him. His campaign later said Trump meant no harm to the media.
Hours later, when he rallied in North Carolina, Trump (who has maintained an aggressive schedule of three or four rallies a day in the final stretch of the campaign, although he sometimes lamented the pace) seemed confused about the state in which that was found.
On Monday, Trump sounded more nostalgic as he contemplated an uncertain future.
“It’s sad,” he said in Pittsburgh. “We will never have this. But we will have other meetings.”
