‘I took a bullet for democracy’, Trump tells first rally since assassination bid

Donald Trump, at his first campaign rally since surviving an assassination attempt, rejected concerns that he is a threat to America’s democratic system, triumphantly telling the crowd: “I took a bullet for democracy.”
“I’m not an extremist at all,” the newly-crowned Republican presidential nominee continued at the rally in swing state Michigan, dismissing his reported links to Project 2025, a shadow manifesto from figures close to him that has been characterised by opponents as an authoritarian, right-wing wish list.
In the fiery but typically rambling speech, the Republican riffed on his hardline immigration views, espoused falsehoods about migrant crime, and repeated his baseless claim that Democrats “rigged” the 2020 election.
He expressed admiration for foreign autocrats including China’s “brilliant” Xi Jinping, whom he praised for controlling “1.4bn people with an iron fist”.
And he evoked the seconds after a gunman tried to kill him at a rally in Pennsylvania, when, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service agents, he raised a fist and yelled for his supporters to “fight!”
The crowd in Grand Rapids chanted the word back to him multiple times on Saturday, though some appeared to tire of the lengthy address after 90 minutes and began heading to the exits.
The rally represented a moment remarkable by any measure, with Trump back on the campaign trail exactly one week since the assassination attempt.
He wore a new, smaller, flesh-coloured bandage over his right ear, grazed in the attack by a 20-year-old gunman who also killed one bystander.
Trump referred to the assassination attempt several times on Saturday.
“I hope I don’t have to go through that again. It was so horrible,” Trump said.
Security was tight inside Van Andel Arena, amid questions over Secret Service lapses at the Pennsylvania rally – though there were few visible signs of enhanced law enforcement in Grand Rapids.
Saturday was Trump’s debut campaign appearance with running mate JD Vance, a 39-year-old US senator with blue-collar roots who could help win over critical Rust Belt battlegrounds like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Vance warmed up the crowd, taking a swipe at Harris.
“I did serve in the United States Marine Corps and build a business. What the hell have you done, other than collect a cheque?” he said of the former US senator and California attorney-general.
Trump supporters had begun lining up in their dozens in Grand Rapids a day before the rally began.
Edward Young, 64, was wearing a T-shirt showing the already iconic photo of Trump pumping his fist moments after being shot.
“They have turned him into a martyr and left him alive,” he said. “Now he’s more powerful than ever.”
Trump’s former physician, Ronny Jackson, said on Saturday that the former president is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound to his right ear, but noted intermittent bleeding and said Trump may require a hearing exam.
The bullet fired by the would-be assassin at the July 13 rally in Pennsylvania came “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head”, said Jackson, a Republican congressman from Texas who had served as physician to presidents Trump and Barack Obama.