Trump makes his final pitch in Michigan, sticking to tradition

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Former president Donald Trump appeared for what will be his last ever presidential campaign rally Monday night — or very early Tuesday morning, to be exact — for a crowd of about 12,000 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This was Trump’s third time appearing in Grand Rapids on election eve; he spoke to voters from the DeVos Place Convention Center in 2016 when he won the state, at Gerald R. Ford International Airport in 2020, and tonight at the Van Andel Arena. In 2020, Trump said cheekily about his return to the city, “We can be a little superstitious, right?” 

Trump took the stage just after midnight to roars from the crowd as “God Bless the USA” played on the speakers. Trump joked that doing four rallies in one day is a “little difficult” but “not really” because of the “love” shown to him by his supporters.

Trump’s final pitch to voters was that he will fix the problems of four years of the Biden-Harris administration: “We don’t have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline and decay.” He promised to close the southern border, end inflation by embracing American-produced energy, increase wages through tariffs and reduce crime by empowering police. Trump pledged to end taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. “Joe and Kamala broke it and I will fix it,” he asserted.

The former president also recalled the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, saying that “many people say that God saved me to save America.” He urged his supporters to make sure they get out and vote to save the country with him. “I’m not running against Kamala, I’m running against an evil, Democrat system,” he said. “We have to defeat that system and America’s future will be an absolutely incredible one.” 

“This isn’t my campaign, this is your campaign,” he said. “There’s love in this room. I think there’s love in this whole country. It’s a much bigger movement than we realize.” 

It was obvious that Trump was also having fun with his final political rally, opting for a lot of his stand-up comedy style of rallying rather than sticking directly to the script. After about ten minutes of riffing, Trump gestured to the teleprompter, “This beautiful little speech, I haven’t really gotten to it yet,” adding, “Aren’t you glad to have someone who doesn’t have to use a teleprompter?” He referenced President Joe Biden calling his supporters “garbage” before expressing sympathy for the Democratic Party forcing him out of the presidential race. He told the story of watching a SpaceX rocket return to Earth, laughing that the heat of its reentry would be “a little rough on the paint job.” 

The establishment media’s biggest headline from the rally was that Trump jokingly almost called former Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “bitch” after condemning her alleged insider trading as a member of Congress.

Trump’s clearest path to victory is through the Sun Belt states and Pennsylvania, but campaign officials still believe Michigan is very much in play. According to data provided on background by a top Republican strategist, Harris holds the lead in early voting. But they believe Trump can win the state with a final push for Election Day turnout among likely Trump supporters and low propensity voters. Trump won here in 2016 by 10,704 votes with a final furious push in the last days of the campaign matched with a strong performance by third party candidates dissatisfied with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

A volunteer for the campaign told The Spectator that attendees started lining up for the event at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday night, standing in the rain for their last chance to catch the former president on the campaign trail.

Michigan GOP chairman Pete Hoekstra told the crowd of Trump’s decision to close his campaign in Grand Rapids, “[Trump] knows the warm welcome that West Michiganders will give to him tonight. We’re all here to send one message — well, maybe a couple. But the first message from all of us to you tonight is, ‘Thank you’. You have put us on the edge of winning the presidency and making America great again.” 

Unlike past Trump rallies attended by this reporter during the 2020 election, the crowd featured a heavy contingent of young voters in their twenties, both men and women. In a Harvard poll published this month, Harris’s lead with voters under the age of thirty in swing states sits at just nine points. Biden won Michigan with a twenty-four point advantage among voters under thirty in 2020.

About an hour and a half before the rally started, podcaster Joe Rogan announced that he was endorsing Trump after a surprise episode with billionaire Trump-backer and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. “[Musk] makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way. For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump,” Rogan said in an X post. Rogan endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2020 Democratic primary and, although he said he would rather vote for Trump than Biden, confirmed in 2022 that he voted for neither candidate.

Trump embarked on an independent media tour this election cycle, appearing on Rogan’s show, the most listened to podcast in the country, and sitting down with comedians Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross and more. The novel strategy was reportedly orchestrated by Trump’s youngest son, Barron, an eighteen-year-old attending college at New York University.

At his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, rally earlier in the evening, Trump also received an endorsement from former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who previously criticized the campaign for not doing enough outreach to women. “He will be a protector of women and it’s why I am voting for him. He will look out for our boys too. Our forgotten boys and our forgotten men. He will not look at our boys like they are second-class citizens,” Kelly said. And ladies out there, how can you win when the sons and the husbands and the brothers and the dads you love are losing? That’s not a win. I hope all of you do what I did last week. Vote Trump and get ten friends to vote Trump too.” 

The music selection at Monday night’s rally was decidedly more modern than the usual pre-rally mix of standards, classic rock and Motown, featuring Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, remixes of Black Eyed Peas hits, Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside,” and the Weeknd. The series of top-40 hits didn’t stop hordes of young men from doing the now-famous Trump dance.

Republican strategists note that it is harder to win Michigan in the years following 2016 because of the breakdown of the state party. In 2016, then Michigan GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel raised $20 million to the party for down-ballot races and organized an effective ground game. Since then, the party has been through chaotic leadership fights and an inability to fundraise, leading some wealthy GOP leaders, like former education secretary Betsy DeVos and former Michigan GOP chairman Ron Wiser, to create campaign and party infrastructures outside of the official state party. Tuesday night will be a big test as to whether these independent efforts were enough to overcome the state party woes.

Trump finished speaking at the Grand Rapids rally just shy of 2:10 a.m. after almost two full hours on stage. Whatever may happen in the election, the idea of Trump, after a decade-long political realignment and the complete transformation of the Republican Party, hosting his final rally is quite surreal.

“This is my last rally. Can you believe it?” Trump asked. No, we can’t.