Our conversation with Kathy Gray
Donald Trump came to Michigan on Tuesday to, well, be Trump.As a few dozen Democrats protested outside the Birch Run Expo Center last night, the crowd inside was certainly receptive to Trump and his message.
“There was a lot of passion in the room, that’s for sure,” Detroit Free Press reporter Kathy Gray tells us.
The crowd of over 2,000 filled the Center, standing room only, and according to Gray both temperature and emotions ran high.
Gray says Trump talked for more than 50 minutes and touched on “just about everything.”
According to Gray, it was a great opportunity to see Trump interact with his supporters, and the result may not be surprising to those at all familiar with the Trump brand.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s saying something crazy, if he’s saying something insulting,” Gray says, “they love it. They love it that he speaks his mind, that he’s not afraid to really give it to people.”
Trump talked to reporters for 15 minutes before his speech, mostly railing on his competition.
Trump criticized how much Jeb Bush has spoken on women’s health issues, calling the decision to do so, “a fatal mistake,” according to Gray.
Hillary Clinton received criticism on her recent email scandal and her time as Secretary of State.
“He made fun of Rand Paul’s height and said that [Paul] and Rick Perry were dropping in the polls because they were criticizing him so much,” Gray says.
Shortly after speaking with the media, Gray tells us Trump went on in his speech to call the media “a bunch of scavengers, which was a big applause line.”
“That’s his style,” she says. “That’s what he does, and he’s just not going to stop doing that.”
Among other topics, Trump spoke on the Mexican government and a promise to build a wall, which Gray tells us was the biggest applause line of the night.
“He said that the Mexican government was going to build the wall and they were going to be happy about it,” Gray says. “The audience loved it. Immigration for them is a huge issue.”
Trump also spoke ill of Ford Motor Company’s decision to build a new factory in Mexico, announcing that had the plan been brought before him he would never have allowed it.
For all of these crowd-pleasing declarations, Gray tells us he didn’t offer any actual plans to accomplish his goals in Tuesday’s speech.
“He said he was going to have plans coming out in a few weeks,” she says.
Trump cited his own career as evidence that he knows how to “get things done,” according to Gray.
“I think the one thing that you have to realize is that he’s striking a chord with certainly a large percentage of the electorate out there who are fed up and who want somebody who’s going to tell it like it is and who’s going to say whatever he wants without consequences,” Gray tells us. “We’ll see what the consequences will be when people start voting.”
-Ryan Grimes, Stateside
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