Trump heads to Michigan for first rally since Mueller cleared him of Russia collusion

President Donald Trump’s attempt to catch a second bolt of lightning in a Michigan-shaped bottle begins Thursday night with a campaign-style rally in Grand Rapids, a booming midwestern city of 200,000 in a state he was supposed to lose in 2016.

Like voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Michiganders stunned politics-watchers by flipping from blue to red as they followed Trump’s election-year economic swashbuckling, and the president’s campaign knows it needs a repeat performance to give him four more years in the White House.

With his ego running hot and his moral outrage firing on all cylinders, Trump will give his first solo performance Thursday night since Special Counsel Robert Mueller cleared him of allegations that his campaign colluded with Russians to improve his chances in 2016.

But voters in Grand Rapids and surrounding Kent County were responding to Trump’s economic message as much as to his bluster when they gave him a 9,497-vote edge – nearly equal to his final margin of 10,704 in the entire state – and the president knows they want to hear he still has his eye on the ball.  

‘Will be talking about the many exciting things that are happening to our Country, but also the car companies, & others, that are pouring back into Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North & South Carolina & all over!’ he tweeted Thursday morning. 

President Donald Trump will travel Thursday to Grand Rapids, Michigan for his first public campaign rally since Special Counsel Robert Mueller cleared him of allegations he colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election

Trump made Grand Rapids his final campaign stop in 2016, speaking to a few thousand people at 1 o'clock in the morning before heading home to New York City to await what would be a world-stunning victory

Trump made Grand Rapids his final campaign stop in 2016, speaking to a few thousand people at 1 o’clock in the morning before heading home to New York City to await what would be a world-stunning victory

Trump boasted Thursday on Twitter that manufacturing jobs including those in the automotive sector are coming back to the rust belt; Fiat Chrysler said last month that it will create 6,500 new jobs in Michigan as it ramps up Jeep production

Trump boasted Thursday on Twitter that manufacturing jobs including those in the automotive sector are coming back to the rust belt; Fiat Chrysler said last month that it will create 6,500 new jobs in Michigan as it ramps up Jeep production

Fiat Chrysler announced in February that it would ramp up its Jeep manufacturing capacity in Michigan to make way for a new SUV model, creating 6,500 jobs in the process.

The company said its $4.5 billion investment would also cause 1,370 job losses in Illinois. Since Trump lost the Prairie State to Hillary Clinton by more than 800,000 votes, the White House won’t likely make any promises to get those positions back.

But Michigan could be the 2020 linchpin.

‘If there’s a way for Trump to win this time without winning Michigan again, no one has made a good case for it yet,’ a Republican operative there said Thursday. 

‘He’ll be back again and again. Grand Rapids is going to look like Grand Central Station in 2020.’

Trump will bring a strong 50 per cent approval rating with him this time, according to numbers released Thursday by Rasmussen Reports. That’s 3 points higher than Barack Obama’s number at the same point in his first term.

The Rasmussen poll is now the only one that samples voters’ opinions of the president’s job performance every weekday. Gallup discontinued its daily tracking poll last year.

A 50 per cent showing matches his best for the year in the survey, which is known for confounding the ‘Trump effect’ by allowing the president’s supporters to register their approval in the anonymity of a push-button phone poll.

Some 2016 polls that required respondents to share their presidential preferences with a live interview appeared to depress Trump’s numbers, reflecting how pro-Trump views became increasingly unpopular in public even as they were increasingly common in private.

Grand Rapids was the site of then-candidate Trump’s final campaign rally before he headed home to New York City in the wee hours of Election Day morning.

A road-weary future president delivered his final ‘Crooked Hillary’ speech of the campaign as fans waved giant red T-R-U-M-P letters that advance staffers had spray-painted on a loading dock.

The roughly 4,000 people in attendance was impressive for 1:00 a.m. as Monday turned to Tuesday, and included families with small flag-waving children in tow.  

During a December 2017 rally in Pensacola, Florida, he claimed 8 times as many showed up.

‘We went to Michigan the night of the election. I got there, started speaking at 12:30 in the evening. It was already Election Day. We had 32,000 people there,’ Trump said. 

‘Hillary Clinton went there in an emergency because she was told that day that she was doing badly in Michigan. She went there, she had a crowd of like 600 people. I had 32,000 people. At one in the morning. I said: “Why are we not going to win?” And we won!’

Clinton had appeared a day before Trump at nearby the Grand Valley State University field house, drawing a reported 4,600 people.  

On Thursday the president is expected to draw about 11,000. He will have his work cut out for him because the demographics of Kent County are now trending leftward.  

When Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer beat a Trump-endorsed Republican last year, she carried Kent County by more than 11,600 votes. She was the first Democratic candidate in a governor’s race to win there in 32 years.

It’s not yet clear how big a difference having the name ‘Trump’ on the ballot will have in 2020.

‘I voted for him and I’ll vote for him again, and we’ll see what happens,’ said Joe Williams, an auto worker who makes machine parts at a General Motors plant in a nearby suburb.

‘It’s like he says. There was no collusion in this Russia thing, and the jobs are coming back, and Make America Great Again, and let’s build the wall.’

‘He’ll be our president for four more years,’ said Williams, who took the day off to stand in line and see his hero up close. ‘I don’t care what anybody says.’ 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk