Trump Tells Crowd to Stop Booing Press, Defends Shooting Coverage: ‘Fake News Reported It Correctly’

At his first campaign rally since the July 13 assassination attempt, former president and current Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump At his rally last weekend, Trump uncharacteristically defended the media and its coverage of the shooting. He told the crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to stop booing the media and explained: “The fake news has reported it correctly. There has never been unity like this.”

Trump said the press had “covered it fairly” and added, “They couldn’t believe what they were seeing.” While defending the media, he also used his speech to defend authoritarian leaders.

“They’re all smart and tough,” Trump said of authoritarian leaders. “They love their country, or they want to succeed in their country, whatever their ideology. But we have to have somebody who can protect us, and (Hungarian Viktor) Orbán was right: We have to have somebody who can protect us.”

“Right now, we have people with very low IQs,” Mr. Trump added, in an apparent dig at the Joe Biden administration. “And the president in particular, he has an IQ of about 70 and he’s going against 210, and it never works, it never works.”

The Michigan rally was also Trump’s first since J.D. Vance — like Trump, an apparent admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán — was announced as Trump’s running mate ahead of this week’s Republican National Convention. Vance’s performance at the rally was criticized by journalist Aaron Rupar, who tweeted: “Vance’s speech is way too educational for a Trump rally.”

Vance praised Trump’s record as president. “He did it so successfully for four years,” Vance said, before noting the unique dynamic between Biden and Trump running against each other. “Think about it: We’ve never had an election where you have four years of one guy and four years of the other guy. And who could argue that four years of President Trump was a lot better than four years of Joe Biden, right?”

You can watch more of the Trump-Vance rally in the video below:

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