Thousands of people have gathered for Donald Trump’s first rally in public since a gunman shot him in the ear last week in an attempted assassination in Pennsylvania.
Trump is scheduled to address a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, around 17:00 EST (22:00 BST) on Saturday, but people had already lined up for the rally in the morning hours.
A queue stretched for about three miles (4.8km) outside the Van Del Arena after the doors opened around 13:00 EST.
A little more than two hours before Trump and his new running mate JD Vance were set to take the stage, the arena, which has a capacity of 12,000 people, had to start closing its doors.
The biggest change since last week’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was that the event was being held indoors, allowing security officers to carefully monitor who entered and to cut off threats from outside the rally.
Shooter William Crooks was able to take aim at Trump in Pennsylvania by climbing onto a roof of a building near the rally stage.
Many of the Trump supporters who showed up at Saturday’s event in the battleground state of Michigan would not let that shooting, which wounded Trump’s ear and killed an audience member, deter them.
They were decked out in red Make America Great Again hats, along with cowboy hats, shirts and full outfits resembling the American flag. T-shirts with Trump’s mug shot were for sale.
Wendy and Steve Upcott’s 26-year-old daughter did not want them to attend the rally, fearing for their safety in the wake of the assassination attempt. But they decided to come anyway out of a strong desire to show their support for the former president after the attack.
“The chances of it happening again just one week to the day later is unlikely,” said Wendy Upcott of Clarkston, Michigan.
Because the Grand Rapids event is indoors, it will be much easier to secure than the Butler rally, former Secret Service agent Jason Russell told the BBC.
There will be metal detectors that rallygoers will walk through, while military personnel will search the whole building beforehand, Mr Russell said.
Trump will likely not be seen until he actually takes the stage, with many of his Secret Service staff in tow.
“You’ll have a pretty, pretty significant number of agents on site,” Mr Russell said.
Investigators have still yet to name a motive for the 20-year-old gunman who shot Trump and was later killed by Secret Service agents.
The agency has faced intense scrutiny over how the gunman was able to fire from a building nearby after rallygoers pointed him out to police.
This is one of several campaign stops the former president has made to the key battleground state as polls show him in a close race against President Joe Biden.
The rally comes on the heels of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Trump officially accepted his party’s presidential nomination and delivered his first public address since the assassination attempt.
The rally also marks the first time Trump will appear on the campaign trail with his vice-presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Mr Biden, meanwhile, has had to pause campaign events after testing positive for COVID-19. He continues to resist growing calls from members of his own party to drop out of the race due to concerns about his age and cognitive abilities.
Trump has for the most part stayed silent about the drama rocking the Democratic Party, focusing on attacks on Mr Biden’s administration in a speech he gave at the Republican convention.
During the hour and a half speech, he discussed deporting migrants en masse and inflation concerns while also recounting the attack 13 July that nearly killed him in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” he told the crowd, adding: “I had God on my side”.
Trump’s campaign also announced that it plans to hold its next rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on 24 July at the Bojangles Coliseum.
Source Agencies
