“The people of Michigan are going to vote to fire your radical left Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer.”
That’s how former President Donald Trump started his rally Saturday night in Warren.
He also took time to praise January 6 rioters, and criticize the FBI raid on his Florida home during the boisterous rally.
Several thousand of the former president’s supporters filled Macomb Community College’s Sports and Expo Center.
During his speech, Trump labeled Michigan’s incumbent Democratic governor “sinister.”
The former president was not alone in slamming Whitmer’s tenure in Michigan’s governor’s office.
Before the former president took the stage, Republican gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon ripped Whitmer’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, crime and especially education.
“Gretchen Whitmer has spent two years dismantling public ed... now we have to put it back together,” said Dixon.
After Dixon's speech, the head of the Michigan Democratic Party called the Republican nominee for governor “a schoolyard bully, not a leader.”
“Tudor Dixon hurled insults and rattled off a litany of grievances because she knows that her dangerous agenda... is out-of-step,” said Lavora Barnes, Michigan Democratic Party Chair.
Thousands of people lined up early Saturday outside the Expo Center to see the former president.
Carrie McEnruw came from Owosso with her three daughters and her mother. She said this is the second time her family has attended a Trump rally.
She said they came back for specific reasons.
“To support him and have him keep that fire going in the American people....that not to give up hope,” said McEnruw.
Recent polls show Republican candidates trailing their Democratic opponents for governor, attorney general and secretary of state with little more than a month before the November election.
When asked about the polls showing her trailing Whitmer, Dixon told reporters she feels good about it.
“After all of this spending, we’re still within striking distance,” said Dixon, adding her fundraising is going “fantastic” and her campaign will get its message out.
Top Michigan Republican candidates hope this weekend’s Trump rally will help boost get-out-the-vote efforts ahead of November’s election.
Republican Attorney General nominee Matt DePerno implored the crowd at the rally to help his and other GOP campaigns.
“It’s time to get out the vote in November. Are you ready to do that?” DePerno asked, as the crowd shouted back “Yeah!”
Republican Secretary of State nominee Kristina Karamo also urged people at the rally to get involved.
“I need every person in this room to get active, to get engaged, to get involved,” said Karamo.
In an echo of his repeated baseless claims of voter fraud costing him the 2020 presidential election, Trump urged his followers to get out and vote next month.
“We’re just six weeks away from the most important mid-term election in American history,” Trump told the crowd. “And we need a landslide so big that the radical left can't rig it or steal it. We have to have a landslide.”
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