Donald Trump hurled a series of insults while in Detroit last week.
He compared the city, which is 77% Blackto a developing nation and that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, “the whole country will be like Detroit.”
If there was any question about whether Trump thought that was good or bad, he was quick to clarify.
“You’re going to have a mess on your hands,” the former president said.
Trump’s comments continued a long-standing and racially charged message he has trashed in major cities run by Democrats. Such rhetoric was central to his failed re-election campaign in 2020, when he warned of crime and the spillover of low-income housing into the suburbs, fueling fears of “white flight” migration from inner cities decades ago.
This year, including Detroit, Trump attacked the most densely populated cities in the three battleground states that are crucial to winning the White House: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He He vilified Philadelphia as “ruined by bloodshed and crime.” and He slammed Milwaukee as “terrible.” Before going there for the Republican National Convention.
Like Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee have non-white majorities. Harris is scheduled to campaign in all three cities this week.
Trump attacks swing voters who don’t share his bleak view of big cities, as well Black voters are trying to swing his campaign won by a margin in the elections, which were expected to be close. But the attacks also speak to some of the prejudices and sentiments that fueled his base during his first campaign eight years ago.
“He didn’t say anything that the majority of Trump voters in Michigan didn’t say or believe about Detroit,” said Dennis Lennox, a GOP strategist who works in the state. “A lot of out-of-state Michiganders probably haven’t been to Detroit in years. Thus, their perception of the city is not necessarily reality. Detroit is certainly a different and better city than it was ten years ago.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, defended Detroit in a statement issued by her political action committee after Trump’s visit. He said, “Detroit is growing by the minute as people fall in love with this special place,” and warned that “Detroiters won’t forget this come November.”
Others point to flaws in Trump’s rhetoric. Violent crime a downward trend is observed nationwideincluding some cities often targets. Detroit had 252 murders last year. It is the lowest since 1966.
“Crime is down; factories are opening,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said last week while campaigning in the Detroit suburb of Warren.
In a statement for this article, Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes said Trump is committed to “safety and investment” in cities where Harris and other Democratic leaders “have their well-being and safety under attack.”
“Our cities have become havens for illegal immigrant criminals, and America’s working men and women have had to take a back seat when it comes to public services,” Hughes added. “Moves to slow down the police have forced the people of these city centers to look after themselves. President Trump wants every neighborhood in every city to be restored to its former glory.”
“I play in the suburbs”
Brad Todd, a Republican strategist who works on elections in Michigan, said Trump is “playing to the suburbs,” where people “miss the days when downtown Detroit was great and think their problems are a failure of government.”
Todd conducted focus groups in Macomb County – a suburb in the Detroit area home of the famous “Reagan Democrats.” 1980s – “people will spend an hour complaining about Detroit and then say they love it.”
The same dynamic is evident in other cities criticized by Trump.
“There are a lot of places like that,” Todd said. “Not everywhere, [but] there are many cities where there is great nostalgia for the best days of cities.”
Andrew Hitt, the former chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said Trump’s comments are unlikely to hurt him in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, which he won in 2016 but lost in 2020.
Conservative-leaning voters in the state’s rural areas have disparaged Milwaukee for several reasons, Hitt said, whether it’s high crime or more resources flowing there, or a lack of personal or cultural ties to the city outside of sports.
“With rural voters, it won’t hurt him at all,” Hitt said of Trump’s anti-Milwaukee comments. “But more than that, I think it helps him with suburban voters.”
Cities in general have become convenient foils for Trump, who has directed his provocative rhetoric at other major cities, some in states that would favor Harris. He compared Chicago, where he owns a hotel tower and will attend an interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday, to war-torn Afghanistan.
Other destinations include New York, where he lives so much In 2019, he established a residency in Floridaand San Francisco, a political base for Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has often been a GOP punching bag.
The majority of the population of all three cities is white.
“Like Living In Hell”
Trump also has a history of insulting Black members of Congress by disparaging the cities they represent. In 2017, the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., took heat for criticism from Trump. Described the Atlanta area as in “terrible shape”. During a 2019 debate with the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. Trump called the Baltimore district “dangerous” and “disgusting”.
“Take a look at Detroit. Check out what’s happening in Oakland. See what’s happening in Baltimore” Trump said this at a 2020 Fox News town hall. “And when I say that, everybody gets mad. They say that this is a racist statement? It’s not racist. Frankly, black people come to me and say: “Thank you. Thank you, sir, for saying that.’ They want help.”
“These cities,” Trump added, “are like living in hell.”
It’s not just big cities that Trump likes to bash. In recent weeks, he has attacked Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado, over their immigrant communities. Trump campaigned last week in Aurora—hardly the epicenter of a swing state—and claimed the city was held by a Venezuelan prison gang. His claims, like those in Springfield, put him at odds with local officials, including Republican Mayor Mike Coffman.
A Republican close to Trump’s campaign argued that his attacks on the cities were not an insult, but rather a promise to address problems that most people living in those areas recognize.
“It’s not like he’s going to Detroit and attacking the Detroit Pistons or the Red Wings or the Tigers,” said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly for the campaign. “When Trump says things like that, it reflects what a lot of people in the state outside the media think.”
Victoria LaCivita, Trump’s communications director in Michigan, said in a statement that Trump “reminisces about when Detroit was hailed as the gold standard of automotive success and revolutionized the auto industry.” He also cited Detroit’s declining population and high homicide and poverty rates as evidence that change was necessary.
“As President Trump emphasized in his speech, his policies will usher in a new era of economic success and stability for Detroit, helping the city reach its full potential,” he added.
The black vote
Michigan was the site of Trump’s memorable appeal to black voters in 2016 to support his candidacy.
“What the hell do you have to lose?” Citing poverty, high unemployment and “bad” schools, Trump Dimondale saidA predominantly white village 90 miles from Detroit.
At the same event, Trump predicted that blacks would win more than 95% of the vote in his 2020 re-election campaign. Exit poll from that year showed him earns only 12%.
Trump has nevertheless talked about improving his standing with black voters during his third presidential bid, even as his policy proposals and unsubstantiated claims and suspicions of voter fraud in big cities may alienate them.
For example, closes allocating federal funding to rebuild local police departments stop-and-frisk policyit allows officers to randomly stop people and search them for weapons. These tactics have been criticized for disproportionately targeting blacks.
Trump and his allies have also continued to sound the alarm about election fraud in cities like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. promises to send More than 100,000 lawyers and volunteers to monitor voting in battleground states. His “terrible” comment about Milwaukee was more about “crime and voter fraud,” a campaign spokesman said at the time.
Meanwhile, a NBC News’ latest national survey Among black voters, Trump won 84% to 11%, finding Harris the nation’s first Black vice president — a margin similar to President Joe Biden’s lead four years ago.
But many Democrats worry that black voters, especially black men, are more open to supporting Trump than in the past or less enthusiastic about voting in general.
Former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, said, “We haven’t seen the same kind of energy and activism everywhere in our neighborhoods and communities that we’ve seen in my candidacy.” he told volunteers before the rally last weekaccording to the pool report. “Now I’d say it’s even more pronounced with brothers.”