Flint — Republican Donald Trump told a crowd Tuesday that Michigan had become an "afterthought" in the auto industry and that "only consequential presidents get shot at," two days after a man apparently attempted to assassinate the former president on a golf course in Florida.

Over about an hour inside the Dort Financial Center in Flint, Trump spoke and took questions from three members of the crowd of thousands of people. His remarks focused heavily on car manufacturing and the economy, as he voiced a pessimistic belief about the country's chances in making electric vehicles.

Drawing a contrast with the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, which has marshaled financial resources to try to strengthen the United States' ability to compete in the production of EVs, Trump said China is "going to dominate" EVs.

China will take over “all of your business" because of electric vehicles, Trump told the crowd. The United States has gasoline, while China has the materials needed for EVs, he said.

“Why are we making a product that they dominate?" Trump said. "They are going to dominate."

"You will not have a car industry left, not even a little bit of a car industry," Trump added.

At another point Tuesday night, while polls have shown a close race in Michigan, Trump contended he was winning the state over Harris, the Democratic nominee.

“I think when people hear what I have to say, I don’t know how you can possibly lose it,” Trump said. “If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry within two to three years. It will all be gone.”

Michigan has won a series of significant investments in electrical vehicle manufacturing in recent years. Among them, General Motors Co. is receiving a $500 million federal grant from Biden's administration to convert an assembly plant in Lansing from making internal combustion engine cars to producing electric vehicles. GM and its crosstown rival Ford Motor Co. are constructing multibillion-dollar EV battery plants in Eaton and Calhoun counties, respectively.

During Trump's presidency, Stellantis converted two engine plants on Detroit's east side into a new Jeep assembly plant, while Toyota and Mazda opened a joint-venture plant in Alabama, and Volkswagen and BMW expanded assembly plants in Tennessee and South Carolina, respectively.

The number of auto vehicle and parts manufacturing jobs in Michigan, about 162,000 positions, has dropped by about 3% from January 2021, when Biden took office, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

During Trump's previous four-year term, the number of jobs in vehicle and parts manufacturing in Michigan fell by 5% to about 166,000, according to the bureau's tracking. But the industry was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2021 when Trump left office.

Total U.S. employment in the auto industry rose 5.75% in Trump's first two years as president to 998,600 jobs before leveling off and then plunging for part of 2020 during the depths of the pandemic. As of August, under Biden, there were nearly 1.08 million jobs in automotive manufacturing nationally, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of U.S. auto industry jobs last month was about 8% higher than the 2018 peak during Trump's presidency.

In a statement about Trump's campaign event in Flint, Democratic U.S. Sen. Gary Peters said Michigan lost more than 200,000 jobs across sectors during Trump's first term in the White House.

"The only candidate in this race who understands working families is Vice President Harris, who has a plan to lower costs, bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back home, and ensure Michigan workers continue to lead the world in auto manufacturing," Peters said.

More:Fact check: Is there a Biden-Harris EV mandate?

More:Here's why the auto industry supports a U.S. Steel sale to Japan's Nippon Steel

'Consequential presidents'

Trump made the comment about presidential shootings at the beginning of a town hall inside Dort Financial Center, a venue that's traditionally home to a hockey team.

He was detailing his plan to place tariffs on vehicles built by Chinese manufacturers in Mexico.

"You wonder why I get shot at, right?" Trump asked. "Only consequential presidents get shot at."

The arena, with a capacity of about 6,000, appeared to be filled for Trump's event. At 4 p.m., about three hours before the town hall started, the line to get inside snaked throughout a large parking lot, with some Trump supporters saying they had already been waiting for multiple hours to get inside.

John Glaser, 65, of Flint wore a shirt with a photo of Trump and the words: "They missed me b----." Glaser criticized Democrats for comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler and calling Trump a threat to democracy.

"Everybody knows it's OK to kill Hitler. But he's not Hitler," Glaser said of Trump.

Secret Service agents opened fire Sunday on a man who was spotted pointing an AK-style rifle through a fence while hiding in the bushes as Trump played golf at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The suspected gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, was later arrested, and the FBI described the incident as an apparent attempt to assassinate the GOP presidential nominee. The apparent second assassination attempt came two months after Trump was shot in the ear on July 14 by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who gained access to an unsecured rooftop near an outdoor Trump rally in Butler, Pa.

Glaser, a veteran, said he has never voted before but will cast a ballot for Trump in November.

"I don't trust my government," Glaser said. "Never have. And I still don't."

On grocery prices

Trump's town hall, his ninth visit to Michigan of the election year, occurred 49 days before the Nov. 5 election and was moderated by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as Trump's press secretary for two years of his presidency.

"They've tried to impeach this president. They've tried to throw him in jail. And not once, but twice, two would-be assassins have tried to take this president down," Huckabee Sanders said in her opening remarks.

Trump's running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, made a separate stop Tuesday in west Michigan.

More:Vance in Michigan: Trump needs more protection from assassination attempts

Michigan is one of a handful of battleground states that will decide whether Trump or Harris is the president for the next four years. Harris, the Democratic nominee for president this fall, will be back in Michigan Thursday for a virtual event with talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

Among the questions Trump took from the crowd Tuesday was one about how he would combat high grocery prices. Trump responded that he would "work" with farmers and that it was his "ambition" is to get people's energy bills down 50% within 12 months of being back in the White House.

"Interest rates, energy and common sense," Trump then said. "A lot of it is common sense."

At different points, the crowd in Flint chanted "fight" in support of Trump and applauded his plan to secure the southern border. Trump remarked that the town hall event was "more fun" than his traditional rally format.

'How can he lose?'

Trump is the only Republican presidential nominee since 1988 to carry Michigan. He won the state against Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by less than 1 percentage point, 47.5%-47.3%, or about 10,700 votes. But four years later, in 2020, Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden by 3 percentage points statewide, 48%-51%, or about 154,000 votes.

Standing outside the Dort Financial Center on Tuesday, Jim Moss, a 74-year-old Trump supporter from Grand Blanc, said he wasn't sure the Republican would win Michigan this fall.

But gesturing toward the crowd in line behind him, Moss added, "How can he lose?"

Moss said he had previously attended at least 10 other Trump rallies and liked how Trump doesn't "back down from nobody."

Nearby in line, another Trump supporter who identified herself only as Sue, said she was in the crowd for a Trump rally in Waterford Township in February. That event occurred in a frigid airport hangar with temperatures in the low 20s and a bitter wind chill that made it feel like 7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sue said she lost feeling in one of her fingers during the Trump rally.

"It never came back," the woman said.

Sue contended that Trump's economic message works and that he believes in "old-fashioned values."

Sue was handing out fake $1 trillion bills with Trump's image on them. On the back, words on the bills asked, "The trillion-dollar question: Will you go to heaven when you die?"

cmauger@detroitnews.com