Former President Donald Trump concluded the final campaign rally of the 2024 election at 2:09 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Election Day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, defying opponents who claimed he was losing his energy.
As he did in 2016, Trump concluded his presidential campaign in Grand Rapids, beginning his remarks before a packed crowd shortly after midnight and speaking for the better part of two hours.
“Can you imagine a crowd like this at, like, one o’clock or some ridiculous time in the morning, on a Monday-slash-Tuesday?” he asked the cheering crowd. “What a compliment,” he said, gratefully, before comparing his rally to his opponent’s allegedly smaller one.
The town is the boyhood home of Gerald Ford, the very definition of an “establishment” Republican. But Ford, like Trump, had been reluctant to see the U.S. enter into foreign military adventures.
And more importantly, for voting purposes, Grand Rapids is in the heart of western Michigan, a region where Trump must turn out the vote if he is to compensate for Vice President Kamala Harris’s efforts to turn out the Democratic vote in Detroit and urban areas.
As he did in the campaign’s “official” closing rally earlier in the evening in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Trump brought his children onto the stage with him.
Eric Trump exulted, emotion trembling in his voice: “When other candidates have packed it in for the night, you know who is standing on the stage at two a.m.? It’s Donald Trump! … I promise you I will be on the stage ’til the end of earth with you … You are going to save democracy in the United States, and you are going to keep peace in the world, and I love you, and we’re proud of you and let’s make America great again!”
Trump returned home to Mar-a-Lago in Florida well after 5:00 a.m., a sign of his strenuous effort in a campaign in which Democrats tried to claim, without evidence, that he was “exhausted” and showing signs of mental and physical strain.
In 2016, Trump won Michigan en route to winning the presidency. After another late-night Grand Rapids rally, ending several hours into Election Day, with voting already having begun in New Hampshire, he and his supporters hope for a repeat of that near-miraculous finish.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
