Harris, Democrats seize on Trump comments insulting Detroit

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and Democrats are seizing on recent comments made by former president Donald Trump in which he insulted Detroit, compared the largest city in the battleground state of Michigan to a “developing nation” and downplayed the skills required for autoworkers to do their jobs.

Trump first bashed the Motor City during a meandering speech before the Detroit Economic Club last week, warning that the United States would “end up” like Detroit if Harris wins election in November.

“The whole country is going to be like — you want to know the truth? — it’ll be like Detroit,” Trump said. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

Days later, Trump again knocked the city in an interview with Bloomberg News hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, calling Detroit “just horrible” and saying that “it’s never come back.” In the same interview, he also suggested children could do the same job as auto manufacturing workers, a huge part of Detroit’s industry.

“They don’t build cars. They take them out of a box and they assemble them. We could have our child do it,” Trump said.

“Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at our cities. We’re a developing nation,” he said later in the interview when asked about competition between the United States and China.

Trump’s comments targeting a city that has prided itself on its resurgence prompted immediate backlash from local and state leaders. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan (D) defended the city as a “beacon of progress.” State Rep. Tyrone Carter (D) told the Detroit Free Press there were “racial overtones or undertones” in Trump’s decision to attack Detroit, which has a majority-Black population.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), a co-chair of the Harris campaign, suggested to Trump last week that he “keep Detroit out of your mouth.” On Wednesday, Whitmer posted another message to her social media accounts, calling Trump out for his record on auto manufacturing and saying he would “never understand” what is great about Detroit.

“Today, Detroit’s on the rise: factories getting built, new housing going up, and middle-class jobs being created. America would be so lucky to end up like us,” Whitmer said. “Detroit represents everything that Donald Trump isn’t: We’re tough, we have each other’s backs, and we will keep growing our city and making it a great place to live, work and invest.”

Last Thursday, Harris responded to Trump’s comments while on the campaign trail in Las Vegas.

“My opponent, Donald Trump, yet again has trashed another great American city when he was in Detroit, which is just a further piece of evidence on a very long list of why he is unfit to be president of the United States,” she said.

The next day, the Harris campaign had already cut a new ad, “Like Detroit,” that touted residents as “winners” and “up-and-comers” who had rebuilt the city, despite many proclamations that Detroit was “dead.”

A representative for the Trump campaign defended the former president’s comments about Detroit, noting that the city’s population has dropped more than 60 percent since 1960 and that its homicide rate is among the highest in the nation.

“Like many Americans, President Trump remembers when Detroit was lauded as the gold standard for auto manufacturing success and revolutionized the industry,” Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for the Trump’s campaign Michigan operations, said in a statement.

Trump’s “policies will usher in a new era of economic success and stability for Detroit, helping the city reach its fullest potential,” she added.

Harris’s campaign has since pushed out several more clips from Trump’s interviews bashing Detroit, and the Democratic presidential nominee herself visited the city earlier this week. On Monday, she stopped by a Black-owned art gallery for a talk about entrepreneurship, joined by actors Don Cheadle and Delroy Lindo, as well as actor Cornelius Smith Jr., a Detroit native. On Tuesday, Harris sat down for an interview with “The Breakfast Club” co-host Charlamagne tha God.

Trump’s comments about a majority-Black city — and the Harris campaign’s rapid response — come as both candidates have been trying to rally the support of Black male voters and as early voting is already underway in Michigan. Detroit has one of the highest rates of absentee ballot returns in the state, and as of Wednesday, more than 50,000 of the city’s approximately 101,000 absentee ballots sent had already been returned, according to the Michigan secretary of state’s office.

One Democratic operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the state of the race, called Trump’s decision to slam Michigan’s largest city “a gift.” Trump won the critical battleground state by less than half a percentage point in 2016, and Joe Biden won Michigan by nearly three percentage points in 2020.

It is not the first time Trump has insulted a large city in a crucial battleground state. Over the summer, Democrats also capitalized on a report — denied by Trump — that he described Milwaukee as a “horrible city” during a meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill that was closed to the media. The city, the largest in Wisconsin, hosted the Republican National Convention about a month later.

Trump also targeted other large cities as president. While in office, he called Baltimore a “rodent-infested mess” and Atlanta “falling apart” and “crime-infested.” On the campaign trail, Trump has baselessly accused Harris of having “destroyed” both San Francisco and the state of California when she served as the city’s district attorney and the state’s attorney general.

Maeve Reston contributed to this report.