A Week After Shooting, Trump Leaves Unity Behind and Returns to Insults and Election Denial

A week after an assassination attempt led him to call for unity, former President Donald J. Trump returned to the campaign trail, lashing out at his rivals and claiming persecution.


Former President Donald J. Trump, right, and his new running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Saturday. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

By Michael Gold and Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Grand Rapids, Mich.
Published July 20, 2024
Updated July 21, 2024, 2:53 a.m. ET

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Even as Mr. Trump made numerous false claims accusing his political opponents of widespread election fraud, he presented the continuing push by some Democrats to replace Mr. Biden on their ticket as an anti-democratic effort.

By contrast, Mr. Trump — who falsely insisted he won the 2020 election and whose effort to overturn it spurred a violent attack on the Capitol that threatened the peaceful transfer of power — presented himself as an almost martyr trying to protect the United States from its downfall. … They keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy,’” Mr. Trump told the crowd of thousands inside the Van Andel Arena. “I’m saying, ‘What the hell did I do with democracy’? Last week, I took a bullet for democracy.”

The line — one of the few additions to a speech that culled from Mr. Trump’s standard rally repertoire — came as Mr. Trump was trying to rebut Democrats’ claims that he was an extremist and distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a potential second term that would overhaul the federal government.

The Biden campaign has repeatedly tried to tie Mr. Trump to the effort, which has involved Trump allies and former advisers. But Mr. Trump on Saturday criticized the project as the work of the “radical right,” even as he acknowledged that he knew some of those involved. … “They’re seriously extreme, but I don’t know anything about it,” Mr. Trump said of Project 2025 — which he kept calling “Project 25,” even as he has previously referred to it by its full name.

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