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Donald Trump resumed campaigning on Tuesday for the first time since a second apparent attempt on his life, boasting “only consequential presidents get shot at” while praising Kamala Harris for making a phone call to check on him.
Trump spoke at a town hall meeting before fervent supporters in Flint, a beleaguered industrial city that was once a jewel of the US automotive industry in swing state Michigan, before factories closed due to foreign competition.
Trump drew a link between what the FBI called a foiled assassination bid against him on Sunday at his golf course in Florida and his pledge to slap heavy tariffs on imports of cars from Mexico and China.
“And then you wonder why I get shot at, right? You know, only consequential presidents get shot at,” Trump said.
Trump’s election rival Harris, campaigning in another swing state, Pennsylvania, said on Tuesday she had reached out to the former president after the thwarted attack.
“I checked on him to see if he was OK. And I told him what I have said publicly — there’s no place for political violence in our country,” Harris said in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).
The White House described it as a “cordial and brief conversation.”
Trump said Harris “could not have been nicer.”
Trump said the would-be shooter was a follower of what he called President Joe Biden’s and Harris’s rhetoric, insisting that he is a threat to US democracy.
At the town hall meeting, Trump supporters said the foiled attack made them support him even more.
“I believe that they want to kill Trump so that Trump cannot try to make his second term in office,” said retired autoworker Donald Owen, 71.
Trump depicted himself at the event as the saviour of the US auto industry as it competes with foreign companies.
He insisted: “If a tragedy happens, and we don’t win, there will be zero car jobs, manufacturing jobs, it will all be out of here.”
Trump defended his convoluted, rambling way of speaking, and then in a tangent on fossil fuel drilling he mentioned a place called Bagram in Alaska, which is actually an air base in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Harris addressed the false stories spread by Trump about Haitian immigrants eating residents' cats and dogs in a town in Ohio, which led to dozens of bomb threats against the community.
Harris condemned this "hateful rhetoric" and said Trump could not be entrusted with the presidency.
Trump was also whisked away by the Secret Service after a gunman was discovered at his Florida golf course, the second such close call in as many months.
The duelling visits of Trump in Michigan and Harris in Pennsylvania come as both focus on the critical swing states, with a new poll showing Harris with a slight edge over Trump in Pennsylvania, thanks in large part to major support from women voters.
