Trump finishes his final rally as he started – with belligerence, falsehoods, and insisting he’ll win re-election
Trump claims he is set for a return to the White House, but he appears to realise he faces a real fight, writes Andrew Buncombe
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Your support makes all the difference.Within Trumpworld, the president’s final rally during the 2016 election campaign has taken on something of a mythic quality.
Having added a final event in the west Michigan city of Grand Rapids, Donald Trump started speaking some time after midnight, continued for 90 minutes, and 24 hours later was rewarded with the narrowest of victories over Hillary Clinton, on his way to way to bagging the White House.
Since then, Donald Trump has held at least 190 election rallies, some of them victory rallies he held even before taking office.
It was little surprise then, that Trump would complete his 2020 campaign back in Grand Rapids, back in the battleground state of Michigan, and back to deliver another display of belligerence, swagger and dishonesty. As he did four years ago, he again vowed he was on his way to victory.
“Does this look like a crowd of someone who is going to lose,” he declared, this time starting to speak just a few minutes before midnight. “Does this look like a second place-sized crowd. We’re all in this together.”
The president started off sounding reasonably upbeat and bright. He thanked his children, his vice president, and his supporters.
Then he set about what has become his stump speech, accusing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris - falsely - of representing radical leftists in step with the media, claiming Biden was planning to lockdown the nation and was undermining the chances of developing a vaccine.
Trump kept insisting that his campaign was doing well in other battleground states - Florida, Ohio, Iowa. Did he know something the polls were not showing, or was that a sign of anxiety?
He also took the opportunity to attack Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who was recently revealed to be the target of a kidnap plot. The crowd yelled “Lock her up, lock her up.”
“I am asking you to go the polls and vote, vote, vote, Remember what I said four years ago, I said I’d fight for you,” he said at one point. “The swamp is trying to stop me. This election is a choice between a deadly Biden lockdown, or a safe vaccine that revives our economy.”
He added: “We want a big win. Not just a win.”
The president’s final event was well attended, thousands of people pouring into a stadium erected on the outskirts of Grand Rapids airport.
Colleen Flannery, 51, an IT analyst said she had been at the president’s rally four years ago. She had voted for him then and was planning to do so again on Tuesday.
“There are just more opportunieas available than there were during the Obama administration,”she said. “And I have a college degree.”
Stephen Hough, a 19-year-old student, said he would be casting his first ever vote for the president.
“To me he just loves America,” he said “You can see that by all these rallies he is holding. He just wants to help ordinary people.”
Another Trump supporter, Patricia Snyder, said she was driven to support the president by her faith. She denounced Democrats for having shifted too far to the right.
“This is no longer about Republican versus Democrat,” she claimed. “This is about good versus evil.”
Trump mocked Biden and played a collection of video clips designed to prove his mental instability.
“Can you imagine losing to this guy,” he said.
National Polls show Biden leading Trump by up to ten points nationally, and by more than six points in Michigan.
Does Trump get to see these polls? Do his aides just show him the handful of selective polls showing him doing better in some states
The way Trump completed the event, that stretched to just over an hour, an hour that represented his final his final pitch to the country to reelect him, suggested he knew he was in reality facing a tough challenge.
“This is the most important election in the history of our country,” he said.
"After what we went through four years ago I never thought I’d say that. But this is the most important election.”
He added: “Thank you Michigan - go out and vote!"
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