OAKLAND COUNTY (WWJ) - Republican U.S. presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at an Oakland County rally this Saturday less than two weeks before the state's Republican primary.
The former president's campaign announced on Monday that Trump will hold a get-out-the-vote rally at the Elite Jet Center at Contact located at 1675 Airport Road in Waterford beginning at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 17.
Doors will open to the public at 4 p.m. The rally is open to the public, but is subject to space restrictions. General admission tickets are located here.
Trump was recently campaigning in South Carolina ahead of its February 24 GOP primary.
Hours before his visit on Saturday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued the following statement:
“When Donald Trump comes to Michigan, he’ll see a state that is better off because President Biden has our backs," Whitmer said in a press release. "While Donald Trump stood squarely against workers, we restored their rights and cut taxes for hardworking Michiganders by $1 billion. While Donald Trump worked to take away the constitutional right to an abortion, we protected reproductive rights here at home. And now he’s doubling down on banning abortion nationwide. While Donald Trump shipped jobs overseas, we brought the supply chain home, with President Biden serving as a champion for Michigan’s world-class autoworkers.
Donald Trump creates division everywhere he goes, but we’ve come together to make our state more welcoming and more prosperous," she continued. "Michigan didn’t buy what Donald Trump was selling in 2020 and we won’t in 2024.”
The former president's weekend trip to Michigan will be his first visit to the state in 2024 and comes months after he visited Drake Enterprises – which makes numerous components, including gear shift levers, transmission parts and other components for heavy duty truck parts --in Macomb County back in September amidst the UAW strike.
During that visit, Trump took a stand against electric vehicles, saying the push towards EVs will doom the American auto industry.
Trump delivered his speech to a few hundred current and former union members at the non-union shop in Clinton Township one day after President Joe Biden visited with UAW members in Belleville, Mich., outside a GM parts plant.
Trump is closing in on the Republican nomination to face Democratic President Joe Biden on the ballot this November, despite efforts from South Carolina governor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley.
President Biden concluded his first trip to Michigan on Feb. 1 and spoke at a UAW training hall in Warren. Biden’s visit came days after UAW President Shawn Fain praised the president’s ties to the working class, saying “the UAW knows where we stand, and who stands with us — Joe Biden,” according to an Associated Press report.