GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN — Donald Trump wrapped up a yearlong presidential campaign early Tuesday after a historic cycle that included two apparent attempts on his life, a switch to a new Democratic candidate and multiple criminal charges — with a final rally in which he urged immediate election results.
“We want the answer tonight,” Trump said from a stage in the battleground state, after questioning the integrity of voting machines and dismissing the possibility that results could take up to two weeks.
Before beginning a nearly two-hour speech that stretched past 2 a.m., Trump appeared wistful as he strolled down the catwalk to applause from supporters.
His voice sounded hoarse after successive 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 remembers being in Grand Rapids in 2016 when there were doubts about his election chances.
The reminiscing 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, railed against Nancy Pelosi and said that he wanted that. called her the ‘B-word’, talked about migrant gangs and threatened them rate Mexico 100 percent on immigration and compared the size of his audience 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 final rally in the same Michigan city where he wrapped up his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The former president was nearly two hours late for his event in Grand Rapids and continued to speak into the early morning hours. As it continued, members of the audience, some of whom had been queuing for a seat in the arena since early in the morning, began to trickle out.
Trump called on his supporters to vote, declaring, “If we win Michigan, we win the whole thing.”
On Trump’s final day of campaigning, the former president also spoke of his third run for the White House as more of an end to an era that began in 2015 — and could finally begin if he doesn’t win the presidency a second time.
“It’s been nine years since we fought, step by step together,” Trump said. “There’s love in this room, I think there’s love in this country, I think it’s a much bigger movement than we understand.”
“Nothing like this will ever happen again,” Trump said. At the end of the meeting, he invited his adult children to join him on stage.
Trump appears to grow more sentimental as he discusses the political movement he has led — a movement characterized by his signature rallies that see thousands of supporters line up for hours. Over the past week, Trump reminisced about his nearly decade-long political rallies, repeatedly making comments about wrapping up 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 gain that much support, even if, he notes, he is ultimately succeeded by another Republican.
“We are doing something historic. This has never been done before,” Trump said Monday in Raleigh during the first of four such stops. “They will never have meetings like that.”
Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, described his rallies as “central” to his campaign. “People feel like they are part of something fun and important, not a conventional campaign, but a movement. We are entering the tenth year – and final home phase – of the Trump rallies. Millions of people have shown up to see him stand up, stand up and speak out. The people are his oxygen.”
Colleen Kill, 31, of Rochester Hills, Michigan, waited in line Monday night to find a seat at the arena and said attending a Trump rally was on her “bucket list.” Kristi Wackerle, 44, of Grand Rapids, said she wanted to “be part of history.”
“This could be the last time,” she said.
Trump boasted about the size of his crowd even as numbers at some recent events dropped. On Monday, Trump claimed he could have filled the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on Friday evening “three, maybe four times.” (It 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 less-than-packed Dorton Arena in Raleigh, where photos show nearly every seat was filled at his campaign rally eight years ago.
Later, in Pittsburgh, Trump mocked Harris for holding a competing rally in the city, calling it “little” and “pretty embarrassing.” He marveled at the “playful” crowd he drew to the PPG Paints Arena, which cheered and cheered for at least the first hour of his speech. Left unmentioned: the draped upper level and the empty seats in the lower bowl.
The Harris campaign turned Trump’s obsession into a frequent mockery of the campaign.
Over the past week, as Trump faced the possible end of his political career, his stance has fluctuated wildly — sometimes within the same day. In this last stretch, he has sometimes shown the cutting humor that endeared him to millions of Americans, first as an entertainer and then as a politician. Speaking to the press on Wednesday from a sanitary van and wearing a bright orange safety vest in Green Bay, Wisconsin Trump mocked President Joe Biden for his rambling “garbage” comment.
But on Sunday, after a series of polls showed positive signs for Harris, Trump was at his saddest. 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 results of the 2020 election. Talking about increased security protection at his rallies following two assassination attempts, he said he “wouldn’t mind” if “someone had to cut through the fake news” to get him. His campaign later said Trump wished the media no harm.
By the time he rallied in North Carolina hours later, Trump — who has maintained an aggressive schedule of three or four rallies a day during the home stretch of the campaign, while sometimes complaining about the pace — seemed confused about the state of he was located.
On Monday, Trump was more nostalgic as he envisioned an uncertain future.
“It’s sad,” he said in Pittsburgh. ‘We’ll never get this. But we will have other meetings.
