GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- President Donald Trump ended his campaign in Grand Rapids in a rally that spilled over into the early hours of Election Day, echoing his 2016 campaign’s final stop in the West Michigan city before pulling off a surprise victory.
The difference in venues shows how much has changed since Trump visited Grand Rapids on Nov. 7, 2016. Trump spoke to supporters inside DeVos Place Convention Center four years ago, but a global pandemic that defined much of the campaign required Monday’s late-night rally take place outdoors at Gerald R. Ford International Airport.
Trump’s 2016 Grand Rapids visit has become somewhat of a legend for the campaign, often repeated at rallies in Michigan. Vice President Mike Pence retold the story while a crowd of thousands waited for Trump to land in Air Force One.
“The president spoke until about 1:30 in the morning," Pence said. “He looked out at a crowd just like this one, slapped me on the shoulder and said ‘Mike I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t look like second place.’ It still doesn’t. Michigan did it before and I know Michigan’s going to do it again.”
Trump won the state by 10,704 votes in 2016, his narrowest margin of victory in any state and the closest result in Michigan’s electoral history.
Trump took the stage just after midnight Tuesday morning and spoke for roughly 75 minutes. He told his supporters to go vote and ignore polls showing he’s behind in Michigan and other battleground states.
“I think we’re going to win everything," Trump said. "I think tomorrow will be one of the greatest wins in the history of politics.”
Thousands of attendees arrived to see Trump speak, some waiting hours in line as the sun went down. Temperatures dropped below 45 degrees after sunset, still providing a slightly warmer atmosphere compared to Trump’s recent rallies in Macomb and Oakland counties.
Related: One last time before Election Day, crowd protests Trump Michigan visit
Jenison resident Amy Rigterink, 56, was wrapped in a blanket, but still felt chills while thinking about the gravity of the moment. She hopes being back in Grand Rapids serves as a good luck charm for the president.
“I’m hopeful. I was listening to the radio on the way in here. They say its neck and neck," she said. "That’s why seeing all these people out here is giving me hope.”
Trump’s rally also attracted Grand Rapids-area activists who protested the president’s arrival. Demonstrators with “Black Lives Matter” and anti-Trump signs lined the busy intersection of 28th Street and Patterson Avenue in Cascade Township, about a mile from the airport.
Aly Bates, of Grand Rapids, takes part in a protest she organized at the intersection of 28th St. SE and Patterson Ave. SE in Cascade Township on Monday, Nov. 2, 2020. The group was protesting President Donald Trump's campaign stop at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport. (Cory Morse | MLive.com) Cory Morse | MLive.com
Erin Perrine, Trump’s director of press communications, said data collected by the campaign to build profiles of Michigan voters suggests the president can still win the state.
Related: Justice Department doubling Michigan Election Day presence to monitor polls
“Right now is our opportunity to get our voters out and get those who may be a lower-propensity voter, a less likely voter, out tomorrow,” Perrine said. “In the last four years, we have built the data operation to this point to say: Who is that voter? What does that voter look like? What is their likelihood they are going to support President Trump? For weeks we’ve been telling them to get out to vote and tomorrow we’re going to make this final push to get out to the polls.”
“We have the greatest closer in political history,” Perrine said.
The Michigan Secretary of State expects record-breaking turnout in 2020 elections, surpassing the 5.08 million votes cast in 2008. Michigan Democrats anticipate a surge in turnout will propel Biden to victory.
As of Monday morning, 2.9 million Michigan citizens already cast absentee ballots. That’s 85% of the 3.4 million absentee ballots requested and approximately 60% of all votes expected to be cast.
Related: See 2016 Michigan election results by city and township: Where are Trump’s biggest strongholds?
Grand Rapids voters submitted 52,968 absentee ballots as of Monday. A total of 187,016 absentee ballots were cast by Kent County residents.
Trump won Kent County in 2016, but Democrats flipped the county in statewide elections two years later, making Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the first Democrat to win Kent County since 1986. Democrat Hillary Scholten is running a competitive congressional race against Republican Peter Meijer to represent the reliably Republican 3rd U.S. House District.
“People are coming forward, they know that we can’t keep going like this, the chaos, the division, the inability to get our arms around this virus so that we can get our lives back,” said U.S Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing. “It’s really motivating people to come out and vote.”
Stabenow said Trump is trying to “relive the past” by coming back to Grand Rapids. Stabenow said a majority of Michigan voters were willing to give him a chance in 2016, but the president hasn’t kept his promises to supporters.
“We’ve lost manufacturing jobs since he’s been president,” Stabenow said in an interview. “He will be the first president 90 years that leaves office with fewer jobs created than when he came in.”
Cory Zigterman said he’s planning to cast his ballot for Trump on Election Day.
“The news will tell you he’s doing a bad job with COVID, with the economy and all this other stuff but we have all these people here who would say otherwise,” Zigterman said. “I like what Trump’s done with his foreign policy. We’ve never had Israel at peace with Saudi nations since Biblical times.”
Final push for Michigan
Biden and Trump have organized 50 surrogate events in Michigan since October and blitzed the state with in-person rallies during the last several days.
Biden visited Michigan five times this year, holding three campaign stops since Oct. 1. The former vice president made his final pitch to voters Saturday, holding drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit with former President Barack Obama.
“We’re in an inflection point. We have a chance to make such enormous progress because the American people have seen what the other looks like,” Biden said in Flint. “They’ve gotten a glimpse of the abyss. I really mean it, they’re ready. They’re ready to change so much.”
Related: In final push for Biden, Obama says Michigan voters can’t be ‘complacent’ like 2016 election
Biden and Harris spent the final day in Pennsylvania, another battleground state that Trump flipped by a narrow margin four years ago. Actress Kerry Washington and former NFL football player Nnamdi Asomugha made a series of stops across Wayne County for Biden on Monday.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris will visit Detroit on Election Day.
Trump visited Michigan nine times this year, holding six rallies since Oct. 1. The president and vice president stopped in Traverse City on Monday evening during a final campaign swing that also took him to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and sent his daughter Ivanka to an event in Eaton Rapids.
The president characterized himself as an outsider fighting against a corrupt establishment working to undermine him at every turn. Trump said voting for Biden would hand government to “people who don’t like you, don’t respect you and want to rob your children of their great American dream.”
“If I don’t sound like a typical Washington politician it’s because thank you, I’m not a politician,” Trump said. “If I don’t always play by the rules of the Washington establishment, it’s because I fight for you.”
Trump promised 2021 will be the “greatest economic year in the history of our country," saying the U.S. will become a manufacturing “superpower.” The president touted new facility investments from Michigan auto makers, though the number of auto and manufacturing jobs in the state has declined since 2017, according to federal labor statistics.
The president played a pre-recorded video collecting a series of Biden’s verbal gaffes and awkward moments for a laughing audience.
“Look, you can’t let this happen to our country, OK?” Trump said.
Trump also invited rapper Lil Pump to briefly join him on stage before segueing into a call for Black voters to support him.
Biden and Obama made the economy a central part of their final message to voters over the weekend. The former president said Trump’s botched pandemic response ended the longest period of economic growth in history.
“America created 1.5 million more jobs in the last three years of the Obama/Biden administration than in his first three years, and that was before he could blame the pandemic,” Obama said. “Trump promised he’d make Michigan the manufacturing hub of the world again. It’s up 1% under his first four years, 15% under Obama-Biden.”
COVID-19 defines 2020
Trump railed against state-mandated lockdowns while claiming that the pandemic is “rounding the turn.” The president warned in Biden would “turn America into a prison state" and impose "deadly lockdowns.”
The U.S. set a new single-day record for confirmed cases on Friday and Michigan set a new record for weekly cases three weeks in a row in October.
Michigan’s health department recorded 178,180 COVID-19 cases and 7,340 deaths, with a statewide fatality rate of 4%. There are 9.2 million cases in the U.S. and 231,125 deaths, the most of any country in the world.
Stabenow said Trump’s insistence on holding large campaign rallies while COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations are rising “shows disrespect for people in Michigan.” Masks have been required for entry at the president’s outdoor events, but many attendees take them off while packed together with thousands of other people from around the state.
“He’s now gone into Northern Michigan and east and west and demonstrated his lack of concern for the health and well-being of the people of our state,” Stabenow said. “As somebody who has lived here my whole life, I don’t appreciate it.”
A new study from Stanford University found 18 of the president’s campaign rallies, including a Sept. 10 event in Freeland, have led to over 30,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and likely led to over 700 deaths.
More than 30 Michigan physicians and healthcare professionals signed a letter expressing concern that Trump continues to hold large campaign rallies in Michigan as the state experiences a surge in confirmed cases. Confirmed cases in Kent County increased by 166% from September to October, rising from 1,860 to 4,952.
Dr. Harland Holman, a family medicine specialist in Grand Rapids, said the president’s rhetoric has caused problems with patients who refuse to wear masks. Holman said he was “shocked” to hear Trump falsely claim doctors make more money when a patient dies from the virus during a rally in Michigan last week.
“All of the physicians I know took a pay cut,” Holman said. “I do know some that actually lost their jobs because the health systems are struggling.”
Thomas Harmon, a 69-year-old Gun Lake resident, said Trump did “a great job” with the pandemic. Monday’s rally was the first Trump campaign event Harmon had ever attended, and he brought a surgical mask with the president’s name written on it in red ink.
“I know there’s a spike, but you’re going to have that,” Harmon said. “The death rates are down. I hate to see anyone – I personally some people that have passed away, it’s a horrible thing, but the Chinese let this happen.”
In Michigan Saturday, Biden said Trump has “waved the white flag of surrender to this virus.” Obama said his former running mate has a concrete plan to rein in the pandemic, increasing testing, completing a vaccine, guaranteeing paid sick leave to workers and reopening businesses safely.
“Joe’s not going to screw up testing,” Obama said. “Joe’s not going to call scientists idiots. He’s not going to host superspreader events around the country."
Trump promised a safe vaccine will be provided to every American who needs one.
“If you want a vaccine to kill the virus, a job to support your family, and freedom to live the great, great life that you’ve always want to have, then go cast your ballot tomorrow for your all-time favorite president, I hope: Donald Trump," Trump said in Traverse City.
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