Trump latest news: Trump boasts about Musk’s $45m donations and says he took ‘bullet for democracy’ at rally: Latest

We’ve now entered the foreign policy section of Trump’s stump speech, and it’s predictably bizarre.

After describing how world leaders like China’s Xi Jinping wrote him “beautiful” notes after the assassination attempt, Trump began riffing about bringing Kim Jong Un to a baseball game as a way to stop him from acquiring more nuclear weapons.

“Just relax, chill, you’ve got so much nuclear weapons (sic),” Trump told the crowd. “Let’s go to a baseball game. I’ll show you what a baseball game is. We’ll go watch the Yankees.”

It’s not clear Trump actually said any of this to the North Korean leader, but that’s probably beside the point for this crowd, who is laughing along with the former president regardless.

Donald Trump has spent a considerable amount of time during his Michigan speech today bashing electric vehicles — be they boats, military hardware, or consumer cars and trucks — even as he praised Tesla co-founder Elon Musk for his support and considerable political donations to the Trump 2024 effort.

Watch his full remarks below.

Not surprisingly, Trump began his remarks at a Michigan campaign rally on Thursday by mocking the chaos in the Democratic party over whether Joe Biden will continue to be the candidate in 2024.

“They have no idea who their candidate is, and neither do we,” Trump said, before moving on to conduct a faux straw poll in the audience over who the Dems should pick and mocking vice-president Kamala Harris and Mitchigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, both of whom have been discussed as potential replacements.

“I don’t know what the hell it is…They’re seriously extreme, but I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it,” Trump said. “But what they do is misinformation, and they keep saying he’s a threat to democracy. The hell did I do with democracy? Last I took a bullet for democracy.”

Donald Trump didn’t waste time in Michigan today and quickly addressed the recent assassination attempt against him.

“I stand before you only by the grace of almighty God,” he told the crowd in Grand Rapids. “I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.”

“We will fight, fight, fight, and we will win, win win,” Trump added, a reference to when he held up his fist and chanted “fight” after being shot at in Pennsylvania last week.

The crowd joined the former president and chanted along with him.

Donald Trump is making his way to the stage in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for his first joint campaign appearance with vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.

It’s the former president’s first rally since an event in Pennsylvania last week, where an assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear.

Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance joined the former president on the campaign trail in Michigan on Saturday, 20 July.

Vance accused Kamala Harris of accomplishing little during her time in the White House as Joe Biden’s vice president.

“What the hell have you done other than collect a check?” Vance asked during his speech, prompting the audience to burst into applause.

Trump introduced Vance as his vice president pick during the Republican National Convention last week, where he officially became the Republican presidential nominee.

A week after a would-be assassin nearly killed Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally, the Secret Service and local police have reportedly “doubled down” their presence around the former president as Trump prepares to take the stage this evening in Michigan.

”I think you can already see they’ve doubled down in a big way,” former Michigan congressman and retired FBI agent Mike Rogers told The New York Post of today’s event, which takes place inside an indoor arena.

“It is a little easier to secure an enclosed building than an open-air building. You’ll see a heightened sense of security at all levels. But even with that said, I have not seen this many police and Secret Service in a very long time.”

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer welcomed Donald Trump and JD Vance to the state ahead of the pair’s campaign rally planned for later today.

Whitmer, a leading Democrat who has been discussed as a potential replacement for Joe Biden on the 2024 ticket, used the faux PSA-style video to tout Democratic policies on labor, abortion rights, and taxes, before telling the Trump campaign, “Have a good trip!”

Watch her full remarks below.

JD Vance made a quick appearance on Saturday to warm up the crowd ahead of a Trump campaign rally planned for this evening in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The US senator for Ohio confessed that seeing his name on campaign signs was still “a little bit weird,” but seemed to slot into the Trump campaign’s signature issues easily.

“We’ve gotta shut down that border, shut down the fentanyl, and make America safe for American citizens again,” he said.

He framed the election as a rare chance to compare candidates head-to-head, after four years of Trump then four years of Biden.

“Who could possibly reject the idea that four years of Trump has been a hell of a lot better than four years of Joe Biden?” Vance added, to cheers from the crowd.

He’s expected to appear onstage again when the full rally kicks off at 5pm ET.

Donald Trump is “doing well” after a would-be assassin wounded the former president in a shooting last week, according to former White House physician and current Texas congressman Ronny Jackson.

“He is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound sustained last Saturday afternoon,” Jackson said in a statement.

The Texas congressman said he perosnally checked on Trump the night of the shooting, and described the former president suffering a 2 cm wide wound to the ear, which caused “significant bleeding” and “marked swelling of the entire upper ear.”

Trump got an initial CT scan of his head at a Pennsylvania, and will continue with a further battery of tests with his personal physicians, including a hearing exam, Jackson added.