Back on the campaign trail for the first time since the second assassination attempt against him, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told his supporters Tuesday at a town-hall-style event in Michigan that it turns out that being a former president running for office is a more “dangerous business” than race car driving and bull riding.

Mr. Trump said he “appreciated” that President Biden and his top rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, reached out to him to express their concerns before returning to attacks against the administration and vowing to take “back our country” partly by slapping massive tariffs on automobile imports.

“Only consequential presidents get shot at,” Mr. Trump said at the event in Flint, where he fielded friendly questions from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary. “But what can you do? You have to do what you have to do, right? You have to be brave. Otherwise, we are not going to have a country left.”

---

---

Mr. Trump stressed that tariffs could help Michigan return to its status as the “Capitol of Cars” and said tariffs “are the greatest thing ever invented.” 

“If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry within two to three years. It will all be gone,” Mr. Trump said. “China is going to take over all of your business because of the electric car.”

Mr. Trump also repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election.

“Everybody knew we won that election,” Mr. Trump said, triggering applause from the crowd.

Before the event, Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said, “Michiganders won’t be fooled by the lies that Trump” and his running mate J.D. Vance of Ohio “spew.”

“Trump is still the same self-serving person that he always has been and this November, Michiganders will rebuke him at the ballot box,” Ms. Barnes said.

Mr. Trump stunned the political establishment in 2016, becoming the first Republican since Ronald Reagan to carry Michigan in a presidential election. Mr. Biden put the state back in the Democrat column in 2020.

According to polls, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump are locked in a nail-biter in Michigan and other swing states.

Mr. Trump had his second close encounter with a would-be assassin over the week after Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old with a scattered political history and a criminal record, targeted him at his golf course in Florida.

Mr. Trump has blamed Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris for fostering the hate toward him.

“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Mr. Trump said of the gunman on Fox News Digital. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I am the one who is going to save the country.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he had learned that running for office was treacherous.

“They think race car driving is dangerous — no,” he said. “They think bull riding … is pretty scary, right? No. This is a dangerous business. So we have to keep it safe,” Mr. Trump said to applause from the crowd.

The race for The White House has been tumultuous.

Mr. Trump survived another shooting attempt in Pennsylvania on July 13, when a bullet grazed his ear. He responded by raising his fist in defiance and telling his supporters, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Days later, Mr. Biden dropped out of the presidential race — forced out after a disastrous debate against Mr. Trump in June and growing concerns he couldn’t win the election — and passed the baton to Ms. Harris.

The race tightened immediately as voters who had lost faith in Mr. Biden’s ability to do the job for another four years at the age of 81 rallied behind Ms. Harris.

Ms. Harris was considered the winner in her first debate showdown with Mr. Trump last week in Philadelphia, but there was much doubt as to whether the showdown would change the race dynamic.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump was targeted by Mr. Routh at his golf course in Palm Beach but survived after Secret Service agents engaged with the gunman.

Mr. Routh could position himself within a few hundred yards of the sixth hole and hide there undetected for 12 hours.  He has been charged with two federal firearms violations and faces additional charges, possibly attempted assassination of the former president or a state attempted murder charge.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald L. Rowe Jr. said Mr. Routh was hiding in the trees near the sixth hole at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, where he had been staked out for roughly 12 hours.

A Secret Service agent moving ahead of Mr. Trump and his party spotted the muzzle of Mr. Routh’s AK-47 poking through the tree line and shot at him. Mr. Routh fled without firing his weapon.

Mr. Routh hasn’t revealed a motive and his actions are under investigation, the FBI said.

Now scrubbed, Mr. Routh’s social media showed his progression from a Trump supporter in 2016 to a staunch opponent of the former president who backs the Harris-Walz ticket.

He has had extensive run-ins with law enforcement and felony convictions since 2002.

Mr. Routh spent the past several years obsessed with Ukraine’s war against invading Russia, begging for international help and attempting to attract mercenaries from Afghanistan and other countries to help defend the country against Vladimir Putin’s forces.

In his self-published 2023 book, “Ukraine’s unwinnable war,” Mr. Routh encouraged the Iranians to assassinate Mr. Trump.

He called Mr. Trump “brainless” and lamented voting for him in 2016, referencing Mr. Trump’s decision to end the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.

“You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal,” Mr. Routh wrote. “No one here in the U.S. seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.”

Mr. Trump has campaigned on quickly ending or settling the war between Ukraine and Russia, which has killed millions of people and cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid.